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JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 



A MEMOIR. 



BY 



OLIYEE WENDELL HOLMES. 




BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 

1898. 



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COPTBIGHT, ^ia78;__— 

Bt OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 



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^W ri^Afo reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Company. 



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••• •-• 



••» ••• 



INTEODUCTOEY NOTE. 

The Memoir here given to tlie public is based on a 
biographical sketch prepared by the writer at the re- 
quest of the Massachusetts Historical Society for its 
Proceedings, The questions involving controversies 
into which the Society could not feel called to enter 
are treated at considerable length in the following 
pages. Many details are also given which would have 
carried the paper written for the Society beyond the 
customary limits of such tributes to the memory of 
its deceased members. It is still but an outline which 
may serve a present need and perhaps be of some 
assistance to a future biographer. 



CONTENTS. 



Section Page 

I. Birth and Early Years. (1814-1827.) 1 

II. College Life. (1827-1831.) 9 

III. Study and Travel in Europe. (1832-1833.) 16 

IV. Return to America. — Study of Law. — Marriage. — His 

first Novel, "Morton's Hope." (1834-1839.) 21 

V. First Diplomatic Appointment, — Secretary of Legation to 
the Russian Mission. — Brief Residence at St. Petersburg. 

— Letter to his Mother. — Return. (1841-1842.) 36 

VI. Letter to Park Benjamin. — Political Views and Feelings. 

(1844.) 42 

VII. First Historical and Critical Essays. — Peter the Great. 

— Novels of Balzac. — Polity of the Puritans. (1845- 
1847.) 47 

VIII. Joseph Lewis Stackpole, the friend of Motley. His sudden 
death. — Motley in the Massachusetts House of Repre- 
sentatives. — Second Novel, — "Merry Mount, A Ro- 
mance of the Massachusetts Colony." (1847-1849.) 64 

IX. Plan of a History. — Letters. (1850.) 61 

X. Historical Studies in Europe. — Letter from Brussels. (1851 

-1856.) 67 

XI. Publication of his first Historical "Work, — " Rise of the 
Dutch Republic. " — Its Reception. — Critical Notices. — 
(1856-1857.) 74 



VI 



Contents. 



XII. Visit to America. — Residence in Boylston Place. (1856 

-1857.) 82 

XIII. Return to England. — Social Relations. — Lady Harcourt's 

Letter. (1858-1860.) 83 

XIV. Letter to Mr. Francis H. Underwood. — Plan of Mr. Mot- 

ley's Historical "Works. — Second Great Work, "History 

of tlie United Netherlands." (1859.) 86 

XV. Publication of the first two Volumes of the "History of 

the United Netherlands."— Their Reception. (1860.) 93 

XVI. Residence in England. — Outbreak of the Civil "War. — 
Letter to the London Times, — Visit to America. — Ap- 
pointed Minister to Austria. — Lady Harcourt's Letter. 

— Miss Motley's Memorandum. (1860-1866.) 101 

XVII. Letters from Vienna. (1861-1863.) 107 

XVIII. Resignation of his Office, — Causes of his Resignation. 

(1866-1867.) 127 

XIX. Last two Volumes of the "History of the United Nether- 
lands. " — General Criticisms of Dutch Scholars on Mot- 
ley's Historical Works. (1867-1868.) 141 

XX. Visit to America, — Residence at No. 2 Park Street, Boston. 

— Address on the coming Presidential Election. — Ad- 
dress on the Historic Progress of American Democracy. 

— Appointed Minister to England. (1868-1869,) U9 

XXI. Recall from the English Mission, — Its Alleged and its 

Probable Reasons. (1869-1870.) , 155 

XXII. Life of John of Barneveld, — Criticisms. — Groen van 

Prinsterer. (1874.) 191 

XXIII. Death of Mrs, Motley, — Last Visit to America, — Illness 

and Death, — Lady Harcourt's Communication. (1874- 
1877.) 213 

XXIV. Conclusion, — His Character. — His Labors, — His Re- 

ward 219 



Contents. vii 



APPENDIX. 

A. The Saturday Club 225 

B. Habits and Methods of Study > 229 

C. Sir William Gull's Account of his Illness 231 

D. Place of Burial. — Funeral Service. — Epitaphs. — Dean Stan- 

ley's Funeral Sermon 241 

E. From the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society.... 245 

F. List of his Honorary Titles 273 

G. Poems by W. "W. Story and William Cullen Bryant 275 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 



I. 



Birth and Early Years. {1814-1827.) 

John Motley, the great-grandfather of the sub- 
ject of this Memoir, came in the earlier part of the 
last century from Belfast in Ireland to Falmouth, 
now Portland, in the District, now the State of 
Maine. He was twice married, and had ten chil- 
dren, four of the first marriage and six of the last. 
Thomas, the youngest son by his first wife, married 
Emma, a daughter of John Wait, the first Sheriff 
of Cumberland County under the government of 
the United States. Two of their seven sons, 
Thomas and Edward, removed from Portland to 
Boston in 1802 and established themselves as part- 
ners in commercial business, continuing united and 
prosperous for nearly half a century before the firm 
was dissolved. 

The earlier records of New England have pre- 
served the memory of an incident which deserves 



Section I. 



Ancestry. 



2 



John Lothroj) Motley. 



Section I. 



Ancestry. 



mention as showing how the historian's life was 
saved by a qnick-witted handmaid, more than a 
hundred years before he was born. On the 29th 
of August, 1708, the French and Indians from 
Canada made an attack upon the town of Haver- 
hill, in Massachusetts. Thirty or forty persons 
were slaughtered, and many others were carried 
captive into Canada. 

The minister of the town, Eev. Benjamin Eolfe, 
was killed by a bullet through the door of his 
house. Two of his daughters, Mary, aged thirteen, 
and Elizabeth, aged nine, were sleeping in a room 
with the maid-servant, Hagar. When Hagar heard 
the whoop of the savages she seized the children, 
ran with them into the cellar, and, after concealing 
them under two large washtubs, hid herself. The 
Indians ransacked the cellar, but missed the prey. 
Elizabeth, the younger of the two girls, grew up 
and married the Eev. Samuel Checkley, first min- 
ister of the "New South" Church, Boston. Her 
son, Eev. Samuel Checkley, Junior, was minister of 
the Second Church, and his successor, Eev. John 
Lothrop, or Lathrop, as it was more commonly 
speUed, married his daughter. Dr. Lothrop was 
great-grandson of Eev. John Lothrop, of Scituate, 
who had been imprisoned in England for noncon- 
formity. The Checkleys were from Preston Capes, 
in Northamptonshire. The name is probably iden- 



A Memoir. 



tical with that of the Chicheles or Chichleys, a 
well-known Northamptonshire family. 

Thomas Motley married Anna, daughter of the 
Eev. John Lothrop, granddaughter of the Eev. 
Samuel Checkley, Junior, the two ministers men- 
tioned above, both honored in their day and gene- 
ration. Eight children were born of this marriage, 
of whom four are still living. 

John Lothrop Motley, the second of these 
children, was born in Dorchester, now a part of 
Boston, Massachusetts, on the 15th of April, 1814. 
A member of his family gives a most pleasing and 
interesting picture, from his own recollections and 
from what his mother told him, of the childhood 
which was to develop into such rich maturity. The 
boy was rather delicate in organization, and not 
much given to outdoor amusements, except skating 
and swimming, of which last exercise he was very 
fond in his young days, and in which he excelled. 
He was a great reader, never idle, but always had 
a book in his hand, — a volume of poetry or one of 
the novels of Scott or Cooper. His fondness for 
plays and declamation is illustrated by the story 
told by a younger brother, who remembers being 
wrapped up j[n a shawl and kept quiet by sweet- 
meats, while he figured as the dead Csesar, and his 
brother, the future historian, delivered the speech of 



Section I. 
1814. 



Birth. 



Childliooa 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section I. 
1814-1827. 



Early char- 
acter. 



Playmates. 



Antony over his prostrate body. He was of a 
most sensitive nature, easily excited, but not tena- 
cious of any irritated feelings, with a quick sense 
of honor, and the most entirely truthful child, his 
mother used to say, that she had ever seen. Such 
are some of the recollections of those who knew 
him in his earliest years and in the most intimate 
relations. 

His father's family was at this time living in the 
house No. 7 Walnut Street, looking down Chestnut 
Street over the water to the western hills. Near 
by, at the corner of Beacon Street, was the residence 
of the family of the first Mayor of Boston, and at 
a little distance from the opposite corner was the 
house of one of the fathers of New England manu- 
facturing enterprise, a man of superior intellect, 
who built up a great name and fortune in our city. 
The children from these three homes naturally be- 
came playmates. Mr. Motley's house was a very 
hospitable one, and Lothrop and two of his young 
companions were allowed to carry out their schemes 
of amusement in the garden and the garret. If one 
with a prescient glance could have looked into that 
garret on some Saturday afternoon while our cen- 
tury was not far advanced in its second score of 
years, he might have found three boys in cloaks 
and doublets and plumed hats, heroes and bandits, 
enacting more or less impromptu melodramas. In 



A Memoir. 



one of the boys he would have seen the embryo 
dramatist of a nation's life history, John Lothrop 
Motley ; in the second, a famous talker and wit 
who has spilled more good things on the wasteful 
air in conversation than would carry a "diner- 
out " through half a dozen London seasons, and 
waked up somewhat after the usual flowering- 
time of authorship to find himself a very agreeable 
and cordially welcomed writer, — Thomas Gold 
Appleton. In the third he would have recognized 
a champion of liberty known wherever that word 
is spoken, an orator whom to hear is to revive 
all the traditions of the grace, the address, the 
commanding sway of the silver-tongued eloquence 
of the most renowned speakers, — Wendell Phil- 
lips. 

Both of young Motley's playmates have furnished 
me with recollections of him and of those around 
him at this period of his life, and I cannot do bet- 
ter than borrow freely from their communications. 
His father was a man of decided character, social, 
vivacious, witty, a lover of books, and himself not 
unknown as a writer, being the author of one or 
more of the well-remembered " Jack Downing " 
letters. He was fond of having the boys read to 
him from such authors as Channing and Irving, 
and criticised their way of reading with discrimi- 
nating judgment and taste. Mrs. Motley was a 



Section I. 
1814-1827. 

Playmates. 



His father. 



6 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section I. 
1814-1827. 

His mother. 



His early 
beauty. 



Begins a 
novel. 



woman who could not be looked upon without 
admiration. I remember well the sweet dignity of 
her aspect, her "regal beauty," as Mr. Phillips 
truly styles it, and the charm of her serene and 
noble presence, which made her the type of a 
perfect motherhood. Her character corresponded 
to the promise of her gracious aspect. She was 
one of the fondest of mothers, but not thought- 
lessly indulgent to the boy from whom she hoped 
and expected more than she thought it wise to 
let him know. The story used to be current 
that in their younger days this father and mother 
were the handsomest pair the town of Boston could 
show. This son of theirs was "rather tall," says 
Mr. Phillips, "lithe, very graceful in movement 
and gesture, and there was something marked and 
admirable in the set of his head on his shoulders," 
— a peculiar elegance which was most noticeable 
in those later days when I knew him. Lady Byron 
long afterwards spoke of him as more like her 
husband in appearance than any other person she 
had met; but Mr. Phillips, who remembers the 
first bloom of his boyhood and youth, thinks 
he was handsomer than any portrait of Byron 
represents the poet. "He could not have been 
eleven years old," says the same correspondent, 
"when he began writing a novel. It opened, T 
remember, not with one solitary horseman, but 



A Memoir. 



with two, riding up to an inn in the valley of the 
Housatonic. Neither of us had ever seen the 
Housatonic, but it sounded grand and romantic. 
Two chapters were finished." 

There is not much remembered of the single sum- 
mer he passed at Mr. Green's school at Jamaica 
Plain. From that school he went to Eound Hill, 
Northampton, then under the care of Mr. Cogswell 
and Mr. Bancroft. The historian of the United 
States could hardly have dreamed that the hand- 
some boy of ten years old was to take his place at 
the side of his teacher in the first rank of writers in 
his own department. Motley came to Eound Hill, 
as one of his schoolmates tells me, with a great 
reputation, especially as a declaimer. He had a 
remarkable facility for acquiring languages, excelled 
as a reader and as a writer, and was the object of 
general admiration for his many gifts. There is 
some reason to think that the flattery he received 
was for a time a hindrance to his progress and the 
development of his character. He obtained praise 
too easily, and learned to trust too much to his 
genius. He had everything to spoil him, — beauty, 
precocious intelligence, and a personal charm which 
might have made him a universal favorite. Yet he 
does not seem to have been generally popular at 
this period of his life. He was wilful, impetuous. 



Section I. 
1814 -1827. 



At schooL 



Flattered foi 
his gifts. 



8 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section I. 

1814-1827. 



Learned 

easily. 



Studied what 
he chose. 



sometimes supercilious, always fastidious. He would 
study as tie liked, and not by rule. His school and 
college mates believed in his great possibilities 
through all his forming period, but it may be 
doubted if those who counted most confidently on 
his future could have supposed that he would develop 
the heroic power of concentration, the long-breathed 
tenacity of purpose, which in after years gave effect 
to his brilliant mental endowments. " I did won- 
der," says Mr. Wendell Phillips, " at the diligence 
and painstaking, the drudgery shown in his histori- 
cal works. In early life he had no industry, not 
needing it. All he cared for in a book he caught 
quickly, — the spirit of it, and all his mind needed 
or would use. This quickness of apprehension was 
marvellous." I do not find from the recollections 
of his schoolmates at Northampton that he was 
reproached for any grave offences, though he may 
have wandered beyond the prescribed boundaries 
now and then, and studied according to his inclina- 
tions rather than by rule. While at that school 
he made one acquisition much less common then 
than now, — a knowledge of the German language 
and some degree of acquaintance with its literature, 
under the guidance of one of the few thorough 
German scholars this country then possessed, Mr. 
George Bancroft. 



A Memoir. 



9 



11. 

College Life. {1827-1831.) 

Such then was the boy who at the immature, we 
might almost say the tender, age of thirteen entered 
Harvard College. Though two years after me in 
college standing, I remember the boyish reputation 
which he brought with him, especially that of a 
wonderful linguist, and the impression which his 
striking personal beauty produced upon us as he 
took his seat in the college chapel. But it was not 
until long after this period that I became intimately 
acquainted with him, and I must again have re- 
course to the classmates and friends who have 
favored me with their reminiscences of this period 
of his life. Mr. Phillips says : " During our first 
year in college, though the youngest in the class, he 
stood third, I think, or second in college rank, and 
ours was an especially able class. Yet to maintain 
this rank he neither cared nor needed to make any 
effort. Too young to feel any responsibilities, and 
not yet awake to any ambition, he became so negli- 
gent that he was ' rusticated ' [that is, sent away 
from college for a time]. He came back sobered, 



Section II. 
1827-1831. 



College life. 



College rank 



10 



Jolm Lothrop Motley. 



Section II. 
1827-1831. 



Colleo;e life. 



His manner. 



His literary 
attempts. 



and worked rather more, but with no effort for col- 
leo^e rank thenceforward." 

I must finish the portrait of the collegian with 
all its lights and shadows by the help of the same 
friends from whom I have borrowed the preceding 
outlines. He did not care to make acquaintances, 
was haughty in manner and cynical in mood, at 
least as he appeared to those in whom he felt no 
special interest. It is no wonder, therefore, that 
he was not a popular favorite, although recognized 
as having very brilliant qualities. During all this 
period his mind was doubtless fermenting with pro- 
jects which kept him in a fevered and irritable 
condition. "He had a small writing-table," Mr. 
Phillips says, "with a shallow drawer; I have 
often seen it half full of sketches, unfinished poems, 
soliloquies, a scene or two of a play, prose portraits 
of some pet character, etc. These he would read to 
me, though he never volunteered to do so, and every 
now and then he burnt the whole and began to fill 
the drawer again." 

My friend, Mr. John Osborne Sargent, who was 
a year before him in college, says, in a very inter- 
esting letter with which he has favored me : '' My 
first acquaintance wdth him [Motley] was at Cam- 
bridge, when he came from Mr. Cogswell's school 
at Eound Hill. He then had a good deal of the 
shyness that was just pronounced enough to make 



A Memoir. 



11 



him interesting, and which did not entirely wear off 

till he left college I soon became acquainted 

with him, and we used to take long walks together, 
sometimes taxing each other's memory for poems 
or passages from poems that had struck our fancy. 
Shelley was then a great favorite of his, and I re- 
member that Praed's verses then appearing in the 
New Monthly he thought very clever and brilliant, 
and was fond of repeating them. You have for- 
gotten, or perhaps never knew, that Motley's first 
appearance in print was in the * Collegian.' He 
brought me one day, in a very modest mood, a 
translation from Goethe, which I w^as most happy 
to oblige him by inserting. It was very prettily 

done,- and will now be a curiosity How it 

happened that Motley wrote only one piece I do 
not remember. I had the pleasure about that time 
of initiating him as a member of the Knights of the 
Square Table, — always my favorite college club, 
for the reason, perhaps, that 1 was a sometime 
Grand Master. He was always a genial and jovial 
companion at our supper-parties at Fresh Pond and 
Gallagher's." 

We who live in the days of photographs know 
how many faces belong to every individual. We 
know too under what different aspects the same 
character appears to those who study it from dif- 
ferent points of view and with different preposses- 



Section II. 
1827-1831. 

College life. 



Hi3 poetical 
favorites. 



His first ap- 
pearance in 
print. 



12 



Jolui Lothrop Motley. 



Section II. 

1827-1831. 



College life. 



Not particu- 
lar as to 

dress. 



A different 
account. 



The accounts 
reconciled. 



sions. I do not hesitate, therefore, to place side by 
side the impressions of two of his classmates as to 
one of his personal traits as they observed him at 
this period of his youth. 

" He was a manly boy, with no love for or lean- 
ing to girls' company ; no care for dress ; not a trace 

of personal vanity He was, or at least seemed, 

wholly unconscious of his rare beauty* and of the 
fascination of his manner ; not a trace of pretence, 
the simplest and most natural creature in the 
world." 

Look on that picture and on this : 

" He seemed to have a passion for dress. But as 
in everything else, so in this, his fancy was a fitful 
one. At one time he would excite our admiration 
by the splendor of his outfit, and perhaps the next 
week he would seem to take equal pleasure in his 
slovenly or careless appearance." 

It is not very difficult to reconcile these two por- 
traitures. I recollect it was said by a witty lady of 
a handsome clergyman well remembered among us, 
that he had dressy eyes. Motley so well became 
everything he wore, that if he had sprung from his 
bed and slipped his clothes on at an alarm of fire, 
his costume would have looked like a prince's un- 
dress. His natural presentment, like that of Count 
D'Orsay, was of the kind which suggests the inten- 
tional effects of an elaborate toilet, no matter how 



A Memoir. 



13 



little thought or care may have been giveu to make 
it effective. I think the " passion for dress " was 
really only a seeming, and that he often excited 
admiration when he had not taken half the pains 
to adorn himself that many a youth less favored by 
nature has wasted upon his unblest exterior only to 
be lauo'hed at. 

I gather some other interesting facts from a letter 
which I have received from his early playmate and 
school and college classmate, Mr. T. G. Appleton. 

" In his Sophomore year he kept abreast, of the 
prescribed studies, but his heart was out of bounds, 
as it often had been at Eound Hill when chasinsj 
squirrels or rabbits through forbidden forests. Al- 
ready his historical interest was shaping his life. 
A tutor coming — by chance, let us hope — to his 
room, remonstrated with him upon the heaps of 
novels upon his table. 

"'Yes,' said Motley, ' I am reading historically, and 
have come to the novels of the nineteenth century. 
Taken in the lump, they are very hard reading.' " 

All Old Cambridge people know the Brattle 
House, with its gambrel roof, its tall trees, its per- 
ennial spring, its legendary fame of good fare and 
hospitable board in the days of the kindly old hon 
vivant, Major Brattle. In this house the two young 
students, Appleton and Motley, lived during a part 
of their college course. 



Section II. 
1827-1831. 

College life. 



Novel-read- 
ing. 



Room at the 
" Brattle 
House." 



14 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section II. 
1827-1831. 



College life. 



Writes for 
magazines 
and papers. 



" Motley's room was on the ground floor, the 
room to the left of the entrance. He led a very- 
pleasant life there, tempering his college duties 
with the literature he loved, and receiving his 
friends amidst elegant surroundings, which added 
to the charm of his society. Occasionally we 
amused ourselves by writing for the magazines and 
papers of the day. Mr. Willis had just started 
a slim monthly, written chiefly by himself, but with 
the true magazine flavor. We wrote for that, and 
sometimes verses in the corner of a paper called the 
Anti-Masonic Mirror, and in which corner was a 
woodcut of Apollo, and inviting to destruction am- 
bitious youths by the legend underneath, 

' Much yet remains unsung.' 

These pieces were usually dictated to each other, 
the poet recumbent upon the bed and a classmate 
ready to carry off the manuscript for the paper of 
the following day. Blackwood's was then in its 
glory, its pages redolent of 'mountain dew ' in every 
sense ; the humor of the Shepherd, the elegantly 
brutal onslaughts upon Whigs and Cockney poets 
by Christopher North, intoxicated us youths. 

" It was young writing, and made for the young. 
The opinions were charmingly wrong, and its en- 
thusiasm was half Glenlivet. But this delighted 
the boys. There were no reprints then, and to pass 



A Memoir. 



15 



the paper-cutter up the fresh inviting pages was 
like swinging over the heather arm in arm with 
Christopher himself. It is a little singular that 
though we had a college magazine of our own, 
Motley rarely if ever wrote for it. I remember a 
translation from Goethe, 'The Ghost-Seer/ which 
he may have written for it, and a poem upon the 
White Mountains. Motley spoke at one of the 
college exhibitions an essay on Goethe so excellent 
that Mr. Joseph Cogswell sent it to Madam Goethe, 
who, after reading it, said, ' I wish to see the first 
book that young man will write.' " 

Although Motley did not aim at or attain a high 
college rank, the rules of the Phi Beta Kappa 
Society, which confine the number of members to 
the first sixteen of each class, were stretched so as 
to include him, — a tribute to his recognized ability, 
and an evidence that a distinguished future was 
anticipated for him. 



Section II. 
1827-1831. 



College life. 



Writes 
poems. 



Writes an 
essay ou 
Goethe. 



16 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section III. 
1832-1833. 

Studies in 
Germany. 



A letter from 
an early 
friend. 



in. 

Study and Travel in Europe. (1832-1833.') 

Of the two years divided between the Universi- 
ties of Berlin and Gottingen I have little to record. 
That he studied hard I cannot doubt ; that he found 
himself in pleasant social relations with some of 
his fellow-students seems probable from the por- 
traits he has drawn in his first story, "Morton's 
Hope/' and is rendered certain so far as one of his 
companions is concerned. Among the records of 
the past to which he referred during his last visit 
to this country was a letter w^hich he took from a 
collection of papers and handed me to read one 
day when I was visiting him. The letter was 
written in a very lively and exceedingly familiar 
vein. It implied such intimacy, and called up in 
such a lively way the gay times Motley and him- 
self had had together in their youthful days, that I 
was puzzled to guess who could have addressed 
him from Germany in that easy and offhand fash- 
ion. I knew most of his old friends who would 
be likely to call him by his baptismal name in its 



A Memoir. 



17 



most colloquial form, and exhausted my stock 
of guesses unsuccessfully before looking at the 
signature. I confess that I was surprised, after 
laughing at the hearty and almost boyish tone of 
the letter, to read at the bottom of the page the 
signature of Bismarck. I will not say that I sus- 
ipect Motley of having drawn the portrait of his 
friend in one of the characters of " Morton's 
Hope," but it is not hard to point out traits in one 
of them which we can believe may have belonged 
to the great Chancellor at an earlier period of life 
than that at which the world contemplates his over- 
shadowing proportions. 

Hoping to learn something of Motley during the 
two years while we had lost sight of him, I ad- 
dressed a letter to His Highness Prince Bismarck, 
to which I received the following reply : — 

Foreign Office, Berlin, March 11, 1878. 
Sir, — I am directed by Prince Bismarck to ac- 
knowledge the receipt of your letter of the 1st of 
January, relating to the biography of the late Mr. 
Motley. His Highness deeply regrets that the 
state of his health and pressure of business do not 
allow him to contribute personally, and as largely 
as he would be delighted to do, to your depicting 
of a friend whose memory will be ever dear to him. 
Since I had the pleasure of making the acquaint- 



SectionIII. 
1832-18o.i. 



Bismarck. 



Note from 
his secretary 



18 



John Lothrojj Motley. 



Section III. 
1832-1833. 



Prince 
Bismarck's 
recollectious 
of Motley. 



ance of Mr. Motley at Yarzin, I have been intrusted 
with communicating to you a few details I have 
gathered from the mouth of the Prince. I enclose 
them as they are jotted down, without any attempt 
of digestion. 

I have the honor to be 

Your obedient servant, 

LOTHAIR BUCHEE. 

" Prince Bismarck said : — 

"' I met Motley at Gottingen in 1832, 1 am not 
sure if at the beginning of Easter Term or Michael- 
mas Term. He kept company with German stu- 
dents, though more addicted to study than we 
members of the fighting clubs (icorJDs:). Although 
not having mastered yet the German language, he 
exercised a marked attraction by a conversation 
sparkling with wit, humor, and originality. In 
autumn of 1833, having both of us migrated from 
Gottingen to Berlin for the prosecution of our 
studies, we became feUow-lodgers in the house 
No. 161 Friedrich Strasse. There we lived in the 
closest intimacy, sharing meals and outdoor exercise. 
Motley by that time had arrived at talking German 
fluently ; he occupied himself not only in translat- 
ing Goethe's poem " Faust," but tried his hand even 
in composing German verses. Enthusiastic ad 
mirer of Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, he used to 



A Memoir. 



19 



spice his conversation abundantly with quotations 
from these his favorite authors. A pertinacious 
arguer, so much so that sometimes he watched my 
awakening in order to continue a discussion on 
some topic of science, poetry, or practical life, cut 
short by the chime of the small hours, he never 
lost his mild and amiable temper. Our faithful 
companion was Count Alexander Keyserling, a na- 
tive of Courland, who has since achieved distinction 
as a botanist. 

" ' Motley having entered the diplomatic service of 
his country, we had frequently the opportunity of 
renewing our friendly intercourse ; at Frankfurt he 
used to stay with me, the welcome guest of my 
wife ; we also met at Vienna, and, later, here. The 
last time I saw him was in 1872 at Varzin, at the 
celebration of my "silver wedding," namely, the 
twenty-fifth anniversary. 

" ' The most strikino- feature of his handsome and 
delicate appearance was uncommonly large and 
beautiful eyes. He never entered a drawing-room 
without exciting the curiosity and sympathy of the 
ladies.' " 

It is but a glimpse of their young life which the 
great statesman gives us, but a bright and pleasing 
one. Here were three students, one of whom was 
to range in the flowery fields of the loveliest of the 



Section III. 
1832-1833. 



Prince 

Bismarck's 
recollectiuus 



The three 
couipanious. 



20 



John Lothrop Motley/. 



Section III. 
1832-1833. 



sciences, another to make the dead past live over 
again in his burning pages, and a third to extend 
an empire, as the botanist spread out a plant and 
the historian laid open a manuscript. 



A Memoir. 



cJ J. 



IV. 



Beturn to America. — Study of Law. — Marriage. — 
His first Novel, " Morton's Hope. '' {1S34 - 1839. ) 

Of the years passed in the study of Law after 
his return from Germany I have very little recol- 
lection, and nothing of importance to record. He 
never became seriously engaged in the practice of 
the profession he had chosen. I had known him 
pleasantly rather than intimately, and our different 
callings tended to separate us. I met him, how- 
ever, not very rarely, at one house where we were 
both received with the greatest cordiality, and 
where the attractions brought together many both 
young and old to enjoy the society of its charm- 
ing and brilliant inmates. This was at No. 14 
Temple Place, where Mr. Park Benjamin was then 
living with his two sisters, both in the bloom of 
young womanhood. Here Motley found the wife 
to whom his life owed so much of its success and 
its happiness. Those who remember Mary Ben- 
jamin find it hard to speak of her in the com- 
mon terms of praise which they award to the good 
and the lovely. She was not only handsome and 



Section IV. 
1834-1839. 



My acquaint- 
ance witli 
him. 



The house 
where he 
was often 
to be met. 



22 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section IV. 
1834-1839. 



His marriage, 



His first 
novel. 



amiable and agreeable, but there was a cordial 
frankness, an open-hearted sincerity about her 
which made her seem like a sister to those who 
could help becoming her lovers. She stands quite 
apart in the memory of the friends who knew her 
best, even from the circle of young persons whose 
recollections they most cherish. Yet hardly could 
one of them have foreseen all that she was to be 
to him whose life she was to share. They were 
married on the 2d of March, 1837. His intimate 
friend, Mr. Joseph Lewis Stackpole, was married 
at about the same time to her sister, thus joining 
still more closely in friendship the two young men 
who were already like brothers in their mutual 
affection. 

Two years after his marriage, in 1839, appeared 
his first work, a novel in two volumes, called 
" Morton's Hope." He had little reason to be 
gratified with its reception. The general verdict 
was not favorable to it, and the leading critical 
journal of America, not usually harsh or cynical in 
its treatment of native authorship, did not even 
give it a place among its " Critical Notices," but 
dropped a small-print extinguisher upon it in one 
of the pages of its "List of New Publications." 
Nothing could be more utterly disheartening than 
the unqualified condemnation passed upon the 
story. At the same time the critic says that " no 



A Memoir. 



23 



Dne can read ' Morton's Hope ' without perceiving 
it to have been written by a person of uncommon 
resources of mind and scholarship." 

It must be confessed that, as a story, " Morton's 
Hope " cannot endure a searching or even a moder- 
ately careful criticism. It is wanting in cohesion, 
in character, even in a proper regard to circum- 
stances of time and place ; it is a map of dissected 
incidents which has been flung out of its box and 
has arranged itself without the least regard to chro- 
nology or geography. It is not difficult to trace 
in it many of the influences which had helped in 
forming or deforming the mind of the young man 
of twenty-five, not yet come into possession of his 
full inheritance of the slowly ripening qualities 
which were yet to assert their robust independence. 
How could he hel^D admiring Byron and falling 
into more or less unconscious imitation of his 
moods if not of his special affectations ? Passion 
showing itself off against a dark foil of cynicism ; 
sentiment, ashamed of its own self-betrayal, and 
sneering at itself from time to time for fear of the 
laugh of the world at its sincerity, — how many 
young men were spoiled and how many more in- 
jured by becoming bad copies of a bad ideal ! The 
blood of Don Juan ran in the veins of Vivian Grey 
and of Pelham. But if we read the fantastic dreams 
of Disraeli, the intellectual dandyisms of Bulwer, 



Section IV. 
1839. 



" Morton's 
Hope." 



24 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section IV. 
1839. 



" Morton's 
Hope." 



A failure as 
a novel. 



Interesting 
as a self- 
revelation. 



remembering tlie after careers of which these were 
the preludes, we can understand how there might 
well be something in those earlier efforts which 
would betray itself in the way of thought and in 
the style of the young men who read them during 
the plastic period of their minds and characters. 
Allow for all these influences, allow for whatever 
impressions his German residence and his familiar- 
ity with German literature had produced; accept 
the fact that the story is to the last degree dis- 
jointed, improbable, impossible ; lay it aside as a 
complete failure in what it attempted to be, and 
read it, as " Vivian Grey " is now read, in the light 
of the career which it heralded. 

" Morton's Hope " is not to be read as a novel : it 
is to be studied as an autobiography, a prophecy, 
a record of aspirations, disguised under a series of 
incidents which are flung together with no more 
regard to the unities than a pack of shuffled play- 
ing-cards. I can do nothing better than let him 
picture himself, for it is impossible not to recog- 
nize the portrait. It is of little consequence 
whether every trait is an exact copy from his own 
features, but it is so obvious that many of the lines 
are direct transcripts from nature that we may be- 
lieve the same thing of many others. Let us com- 
pare his fictitious hero's story with what we have 
read of his own life. 



A Memoir. 



25 



In early boyhood Morton amused himself and 
astonished those about him by enacting plays for a 
puppet theatre. This was at six years old, and at 
twelve we find him acting in a play with other 
boys, just as Motley's playmates have already de- 
scribed him. The hero may now speak for himself, 
but we shall all perceive that we are listening to 
the writer's own story. 

" I was always a huge reader ; my mind was 
essentially craving and insatiable. Its appetite 
was enormous, and it devoured too greedily for 
health. I rejected all guidance in my studies. I 
already fancied myself a misanthrope. I had taken 
a step very common for boys of my age, and strove 
with all my might to be a cynic." 

He goes on to describe, under the perfectly trans- 
parent mask of his hero, the course of his studies. 
" To poetry, like most infants, I devoted most of 
my time." From modern poetry he went back to 
the earlier sources, first with the idea of systematic 
reading and at last through Chaucer and Gower 
and early ballads, until he lost himself " in a dis- 
mal swamp of barbarous romances and lying Latin 
chronicles. I got hold of the Bibliotheca Mo- 
nastica, containing a copious account of Anglo- 
Norman authors, with notices of their works, and 
set seriously to reading every one of them." One 
profit of his antiquarianism, however, was, as he 



Section IV. 
1839. 



" Morton's 
Hope." 



Describes 
himself. 



His hunger 
for knowl- 
edge. 



His study of 
old authors. 



26 



Joltn Lothrop Motley. 



Section IV. 
1839. 



" Morton's 
Hope." 



Describes 
liis own 
character. 



Takes to tlie 
study of 
history. 



says, his attention to foreign languages, — French 
Spanish, German, especially in their earliest and 
rudest forms of literature. From these he ascended 
to the ancient poets, and from Latin to Greek. He 
would have taken np the study of the Oriental 
languages, but for the advice of a relative, who 
begged him seriously to turn his attention to his- 
tory. The paragraph which follows must speak for 
itself as a true record under a feigned heading. 

" The groundwork of my early character was 
plasticity and fickleness. I was mortified by this 
exposure of my ignorance, and disgusted with my 
former course of reading. I now set myself vio- 
lently to the study of history. With my turn of 
mind, and with the preposterous habits which I 
had been daily acquiring, I could not fail to make 
as gross mistakes in the pursuit of this as of other 
branches of knowledge. I imagined, on setting out, 
a system of strict and impartial investigation of the 
sources of history. I was inspired with the absurd 
ambition, not uncommon to youthful students, of 
knowing as much as their masters. I imagined it 
necessary for me, stripling as I was, to study the 
authorities ; and, imbued with the strict necessity 
of judging for myself, I turned from the limpid 
pages of the modern historians to the notes and 
authorities at the bottom of the page. These, of 
course, sent me back to my monastic acquaintances, 



A Memoir. 



27 



and I again found myself in such congenial com- 
pany to a youthful and ardent mind as Florence of 
Worcester and Simeon of Durham, the Venerable 
Bede and Matthew Paris ; and so on to Gregory 
and Fredegarius, down to the more modern and 
elegant pages of Froissart, Hollinshed, Hooker, and 
Stowe. Infant as I was, I presumed to grapple 
with masses of learning almost beyond the strength 
of the giants of history. A spendthrift of my time 
and labor, I went out of my w^ay to collect ma- 
terials, and to build for myself, when I should have 
known that older and abler architects had already 
appropriated all that was worth preserving ; that 
the edifice was built, the quarry exhausted, and that 
I was, consequently, only delving amidst rubbish. 

" This course of study was not absolutely with- 
out its advantages. The mind gained a certain 
proportion of vigor even by this exercise of its fac- 
ulties, just as my bodily health would have been 
improved by transporting the refuse ore of a mine 
from one pit to another, instead of coining the 
ingots which lay heaped before my eyes. Still, 
however, my time was squandered. There was a 
constant want of fitness and concentration of my 
energies. . My dreams of education were boundless, 
brilliant, indefinite ; but alas ! they were only 
dreams. There was nothing accurate and defined 
in my future course of life. I was ambitious and 



Section IV. 
1839. 

" Morton's 
Hope." 



Ill-directed 
studies. 



Want of con- 
centration. 



28 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section IV. 
1839. 

" Morton's 
Hope." 



Aims at too 
much. 



Thinks he 
must write 
liistory to 
know it. 



Learned 
ignorance. 



conceited, but my aspirations were vague and shape- 
less. I had crowded together the most gorgeous 
and even some of the most useful and durable ma- 
terials for my woof, but I had no pattern, and con- 
sequently never began to weave. 

" I had not made the discovery that an individ- 
ual cannot learn, nor be, everything; that the 
world is a factory in which each individual must 
perform his portion of work : — happy enough if he 
can choose it according to his taste and talent, but 
must renounce the desire of observing or superin- 
tending the whole operation 

" From studying and investigating the sources of 
history with my own eyes, I went a step further ; 
I refused the guidance of modern writers ; and pro- 
ceeding from one point of presumption to another, 
I came to the magnanimous conviction that I could 
not know history as I ought to know it unless I 
wrote, it for myself. .... 

" It would be tedious and useless to enlarge upon 
my various attempts and various failures. I for- 
bear to comment upon mistakes which I was in 
time wise enough to retrieve. Pushing out as I 
did, without compass and without experience, on 
the boundless ocean of learning, what could I ex- 
pect but an utter and a hopeless shipwreck ? 

" Thus I went on, becoming more learned, and 
therefore more ignorant, more confused in my brain, 



A Memoir. 



29 



and more awkward in my habits, from day to day. 
I was ever at my studies, and could hardly be pre- 
vailed upon to allot a moment to exercise or rec- 
reation. I breakfasted with a pen behind my ear, 
and dined in company with a folio bigger than the 
table. I became solitary and morose, the necessary 
consequence of reckless study ; talked impatiently 
of the value of my time, and the immensity of my 
labors ; spoke contemptuously of the learning and 
acquirements of the whole world, and threw out 
mysterious hints of the magnitude and importance 
of my own projects. 

" In the midst of all this study and this infant 
authorship the perusal of such masses of poetry 
could not fail to produce their effect. Of a youth 
whose mind, like mine at that period, possessed 
some general capability, without perhaps a single 
prominent and marked talent, a proneness to imita- 
tion is sure to be the besetting sin. I consequently, 
for a large portion of my earlier life, never read a 
work which struck my fancy, without planning a 
better one upon its model ; for my ambition, like 
my vanity, knew no bounds. It was a matter of 
course that I should be attacked by the poetic 
mania. I took the infection at the usual time, 
went through its various stages, and recovered as 
soon as could be expected. I discovered soon 
enough that emulation is not capability, and he is 



Section IY. 
1839. 



" Morton's ^ 
Hope." 



Always 
studying. 

Its effects. 



Poetic mania 



30 



Joltn Lothrop Motley. 



Section IV. 
1839. 



" Morton's 
Hope." 



His ambition. 



Would be 
and do 
eveiything. 



fortunate to whom is soonest revealed the relative 
extent of his ambition and his powers. 

"My ambition was boundless; my dreams of glory/ 
were not confined to authorship and literature 
alone ; but every sphere in which the intellect of 
man exerts itself revolved in a blaze of light before 
me. And there I sat in my solitude and dreamed 
such wondrous dreams ! Events were thickening 
around me which were soon to change the world, — 
but they were unmarked by me. The country was 
changing to a mighty theatre, on whose stage those 
who were as great as I fancied myself to be were to 
enact a stupendous drama in which I had no part. 
I saw it not ; I knew it not ; and yet how infinitely 
beautiful were the imaginations of my solitude ! 
Fancy shook her kaleidoscope each moment as 
chance directed, and lo ! what new, fantastic, brill- 
iant, but what unmeaning visions. My ambitious 
anticipations were as boundless as they w^ere various 
and conflicting. There was not a path which leads 
to glory in which I was not destined to gather 
laurels. As a warrior I would conquer and over- 
run the world. As a statesman I would reorganize 
and govern it. As a historian I would consign it 
all to immortality ; and in my leisure moments I 
would be a great poet and a man of the world. 

" In short, I was already enrolled in that large 
category of what are called young men of genius, — 



A Memoir. 



31 



men who are the pride of their sisters and the glory 
of their grandmothers, — men of whom unheard-of 
things are expected, till after long preparation 
comes a portentous failure, and then they are for- 
gotten ; subsiding into indifferent apprentices and 
attorneys' clerks. 

" Alas for the golden imaginations of our youth ! 
They are bright and beautiful, but they fade. They 
glitter brightly enough to deceive the wisest and 
most cautious, and we garner them up in the most 
secret caskets of our hearts ; but are they not like 
the coins which the Dervise oave the merchant in 
the story ? When we look for them the next morn- 
incr, do we not find them withered leaves ? " 

The ideal picture just drawn is only a fuller por- 
traiture of the youth whose outlines have been 
already sketched by the companions of his earlier 
years. If his hero says, " I breakfasted with a pen 
behind my ear and dined in company with a folio 
bigger than the table," one of his family says of the 
boy Motley that " if there were five minutes before 
dinner, when he came into the parlor he always 
took up some book near at hand and began to read 
until dinner was announced." The same unbounded 
thirst for knowledge, the same history of various 
attempts and various failures, the same ambition, 
not yet fixed in its aim, but showing itself in rest- 



Sectton IV. 
1839. 



" Morton's 
Hope." 



Disappointeo 
expectations. 



His hero's 
story is his 
own. 



32 



John Lofhrop Motley. 



Section IV. 
1839. 

" Morton's 
Hope." 



First 
attempts 
not to be 
undervalued. 



less effort, belong to the hero of the story and its 
narrator. 

Let no man despise the first efforts of immature 
genius. Nothing can be more crude as a novel, 
nothing more disappointing, than " Morton's Hope." 
But in no other of Motley's writings do we get such 
an inside view of his character with its varied im- 
pulses, its capricious appetites, its unregulated forces, 
its impatient grasp for all kinds of knowledge. 
With all his university experiences at home and 
abroad, it might be said with a large measure of 
truth that he was a self-educated man, as he had 
been a self-taught boy. His instincts were too 
powerful to let him work quietly in the common 
round of school and college training. Looking at 
him as his companions describe him, as he delineates 
himself mutato nomine, the chances of success would 
have seemed to all but truly prophetic eyes A^ery 
doubtful, if not decidedly against him. Too many 
brilliant young novel-readers and lovers of poetry, 
excused by their admirers for their shortcomings 
on the strength of their supposed birthright of "gen- 
ius," have ended where they began ; flattered into 
the vain belief that they were men at eighteen or 
twenty, and finding out at fifty that they were and 
always had been nothing more than boys. It was 
but a tangled skein of life that Motley's book 
showed us at twenty-five, and older men might 



A Memoir. 



33 



well have doubted whether it would ever be wound 
off in any continuous thread. To repeat his own 
words, he had crowded together the materials for 
his work, but he had no pattern, and consequently 
never bec^an to weave. 

The more this first work of Motley's is examined, 
the more are its faults as a story and its interest as 
a self-revelation made manifest to the reader. The 
future historian, who spared no pains to be accurate, 
falls into the most extraordinary anachronisms in 
almost every chapter. Brutus in a bob- wig, Othello 
in a swallow-tail coat, could hardly be more incon- 
gruously equipped than some of his characters in 
the manner of thought, the phrases, the way of^ 
bearing^ themselves which belong to them in the 
tale, but never could have belonged to characters^ 
of our Eevolutionary period. He goes so far in his 
carelessness as to mix up dates in such a way as 
almost to convince us that he never looked over 
his own manuscript or proofs. His hero is in 
Prague in June, 1777, reading a letter received 
from America in less than a fortnight from the date 
of its being written ; in August of the same year 
he is in the American camp, where he is found 
in the company of a certain Colonel Waldron, an 
officer of some standing in the Eevolutionary Army, 
with whom he is said to have been constantly asso- 
ciated for some three months, having arrived in 



Section IV. 
1839. 



" Morton's 
Hope." 



Anachro- 
nisms in his 
novel. 



84 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section IV. 
1839. 

V 

«' Morton's 
Jlope." 



Redeemicg 
passages. 



America, as he says, on the 16th of May, that is 
to say, six weeks or more before he sailed, accord- 
ing to his previous account. Bohemia seems to 
have bewitched his chronology as it did Shake- 
speare's geography. To have made his story a 
consistent series of contradictions, Morton should 
have sailed from that Bohemian seashore which 
may be found in " A Winter's Tale," but not in the 
map of Europe. 

And yet in the midst of all these marks of haste 
and negligence, here and there the philosophical 
student of history betrays himself, the ideal of noble 
achievement glows in an eloquent paragraph, or is 
embodied in a loving portrait like that of the pro- 
fessor and historian Harlem. The novel, taken in 
connection with the subsequent developments of the 
writer's mind, is a study of singular interest. It is 
a chaos before the creative epoch ; the light has not 
been divided from the darkness ; the firmament has 
not yet divided the waters from the waters. The 
forces at work in a human intelligence to bring 
harmony out of its discordant movements are as 
mysterious, as miraculous, we might truly say, as 
those w^hich give shape and order to the confused 
materials out of which habitable worlds are evolved. 
It is too late now to be sensitive over this un- 
successful attempt as a story and unconscious suc- 
cess, as a self-portraiture. The first sketches of Paul 



A Memoir. 



35 



Veronese, the first patterns of the Gobelin tapestr}^, 
are not to be criticised for the sake of pointing out 
their inevitable and too manifest imperfections. 
They are to be carefully studied as the earliest 
efforts of the hand which painted the Marriage at 
Cana, of the art which taught the rude fabrics made 
to be trodden under foot to rival the glowing canvas 
of the great painters. None of Motley's subsequent 
writings give such an insight into his character 
and mental history. It took many years to train 
the as yet undisciplined powers into orderly obedi- 
ence, and to bring the unarranged materials into 
the oroanic connection which was needed in the 
construction of a work that should endure. There 
was a long interval between his early manhood 
and the middle term of life, during which the slow 
process of evolution was going on. There are 
plants which open their flowers with the first rays 
of the sun ; there are others that wait until evening 
to spread their petals. It was already the high 
noon of life with him before his genius had truly 
shown itself; if he had not lived beyond this 
period he would have left nothing to give him a 
lasting name. 



Section IV. 
1839. 

" Morton's 
Hope." 



36 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section V. 
1841-1842. 



Mrst 

diplomatic 

appointment. 



V. 



First DiplomatiG Appointment, — Secretary of Lega- 
tion to the Russian Mission. — Brief Hesidence at 
St. Petersburg . — Letter to his Mother. — Return. 
{1841-1842.) 

In the autumn of 1841 Mr. Motley received the 
appointment of Secretary of Legation to the Eus- 
sian Mission, Mr. Todd being then the Minister. 
Arriving at St. Petersburg just at the beginning 
of winter, he found the climate acting very unfavor- 
ably upon his spirits if not upon his health, and 
was unwilling that his wife and his two young 
children should be exposed to its rigors. The ex- 
pense of living, also, was out of proportion to his 
income, and his letters show that he had hardly 
established himself in St. Petersburg before he 
had made up his mind to leave a place where he 
found he had nothing to do and little to enjoy. 
He was homesick, too, as a young husband and 
father with an affectionate nature like his ought to 
have been under these circumstances. He did not 
regret having made the experiment, for he knew 
that he should not have been satisfied with himself 



A Memoir. 



37 



if he had not made it. It was his first trial of a career 
in which he contemplated embarking, and in which 
afterwards he had an eventful experience. In his 
private letters to his family, many of which I have 
had the privilege of looking over, he mentions in 
detail all the reasons which influenced him in form- 
ing his own opinion about the e:5Cpediency of a con- 
tinued residence at St. Petersburg, and leaves the 
decision to her in whose judgment he always had 
the greatest confidence. No unpleasant circum- 
stance attended his resignation of his Secretaryship, 
and though it must have been a disappointment to 
find that the place did not suit him, as he and his 
family were then situated, it was only at the worst 
an experiment fairly tried and not proving satisfac- 
tory. He left St. Petersburg after a few months' resi- 
dence, and returned to America. On reaching New 
York he was met by the sad tidings of the death of 
his first-born child, a boy of great promise, who had 
called out all the affections of his' ardent nature. 
It was long before he recovered from the shock of 
this great affliction. The boy had shown a very quick 
and bright intelligence, and his father often betrayed 
a pride in his gifts and graces which he never for a 
moment made apparent in regard to his own. 

Among the letters which he wrote from St. Pe- 
tersburg are two miniature ones directed to this 
little boy. His affectionate disposition shows itself 



Section V. 
1841-1842. 



Resigns and 
returns to 
America. 



Death of hia 
son. 



38 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section V. 
1841-1842. 



His letters. 



From a 
letter to his 
mother. 



very sweetly in these touching mementos of a love 
of which his first great sorrow was so soon to be 
born. Not less charming are his letters to his 
mother, showing the tenderness with which he al- 
ways regarded her, and full of all the details which 
he thought would entertain one to whom all that 
related to her children was always interesting. Of 
the letters to his wife it is needless to say more 
than that they always show the depth of the love 
he bore her and the absolute trust he placed in her, 
consulting her at all times as his nearest and wisest 
friend and adviser, — one in all respects fitted 

To warn, to comfort, and command. 

I extract a passage from one of his letters to hia 
mother, as much for the sake of lending a character 
of reality to his brief residence at St. Petersburg as 
for that of the pleasant picture it gives us of an 
interior in that Northern capital. 

" We entered through a small vestibule, with the 
usual arrangement of treble doors, padded with 
leather to exclude the cold, and guarded by two 
^ proud young porters ' in severe cocked hats and 
formidable batons, into a broad hall, — threw off 
our furred boots and cloaks, ascended a carpeted 
marble staircase, in every angle of which stood a 
statuesque footman in gaudy coat and unblem- 
ished unmentionables, and reached a broad land- 



A Memoir. 



39 



ing upon the top thronged as usual with servants. 
Thence we passed through an antechamber into a 
long, high, brilliantly lighted, saffron-papered room, 
in which a dozen card-tables were arranged, and 
thence into the receiving-room. This ' was a large 
room, with a splendidly inlaid and polished floor, 
the walls covered with crimson satin, the cornices 
heavily incrusted with gold, and the ceiling beau- 
tifully painted in arabesque. The massive fau- 
teuils and sofas, as also the drapery, were of 
crimson satin with a profusion of gilding. The 
ubiquitous portrait of the Emperor was the only 
picture, and was the same you see everywhere. 
This crimson room had the doors upon the side 
facing the three windows. The innermost opened 
into a large supper-room, in which a table was 
spread covered with the usual refreshments of Eu- 
ropean parties, — tea, ices, lemonade, and et ceteras, 
— and the other opened into a ball-room which is a 
sort of miniature of the ' salle blanche' of the Win- 
ter Palace, being white and gold, and very brilliantly 
lighted with ' ormolu ' chandeliers filled with myri- 
ads of candles. This room (at least forty feet long- 
by perhaps twenty-five) opened into a carpeted con- 
servatory of about the same size, filled with orange- 
trees and japonica plants covered with fruit and 
flowers, arranged very gracefully into arbors, with 
luxurious seats under the pendent boughs, and with 



Skction v. 
1841-1842. 



Description 
of a Uussiai 
interior. 



40 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section V. 
1841-1843. 



Russian 
ladies. 



here and there a pretty marble statue gleaming 
through the green and glossy leaves. One might 
almost have imagined one's self in the ' land of the 
cypress and myrtle' instead of our actual where- 
about upon the polar banks of the Neva. Wan- 
dering through these mimic groves or reposing/ 
from the fatigues of the dance, was many a fair and 
graceful form, while the brilliantly lighted ball-room, 
filled with hundreds of exquisitely dressed women 
(for the Eussian ladies, if not very pretty, are 
graceful, and make admirable toilettes), formed a 
dazzling contrast with the tempered light of the 
' Winter Garden.' The conservatory opened into 
a library, and from the library you reach the ante- 
chamber, thus completing the ' giro ' of one of the 
prettiest houses in St. Petersburg. I waltzed one 
waltz and quadrilled one quadrille — but it was 
hard work — and as the sole occupation of these 
parties is dancing and card-playing — conversation 
apparently not being customary — they are to me 
not very attractive." 

He could not be happy alone, and there were 
good reasons against his being joined by his wife 
and children. 

" With my reserved habits," he says, " it would 
take a great deal longer to become intimate here 
than to thaw the Baltic. I have only to ' knock 
that it shall be opened to me,' but that is just what 



A Memoir. 



41 



I hate to do ' Man deliglits not me, no, nor 

woman neither.' " 

Disappointed in his expectations, but happy in 
the thought of meeting his wife and children, he 
came back to his household to find it clad in 
mourning for the loss of its first-born. 



Section V. 
1842. 

His return. 



His bereave- 
ment. 



42 



John Lofhrop Motley. 



Section VI. 
1844. 

Letter to 
Mr. Park 
Benjamin. 



Election of 
Mr. Polk. 



VI. 



Letter to Park Benjaviin. — Political Views and 
Feelings. (IS44.) 

A LETTER to Mr. Park Benjamin, dated Decem- 
ber 17, 1844, which has been kindly lent me by 
Mrs. Mary Lanman Douw of Poughkeepsie, gives a 
very complete and spirited account of himself at 
this period. He begins with a quiet, but tender 
reference to the death of his younger brother, 
Preble, one of the most beautiful youths seen or 
remembered among us, "a great favorite," as he 
says, "in the family and indeed with every one 
who knew him." He mentions the fact that his 
friends and near connections, the Stackpoles, are in 
Washington, which place he considers as exception- 
ably odious at the time when he is writing. The 
election of Mr. Polk as the opponent of Henry 
Clay gives him a discouraged feeling about our 
institutions. The question, he thinks, is now settled 
that a statesman can never again be called to admin- 
ister the government of the country. He is almost 
if not quite in despair "because it is now proved that 
a man, take him for all in all, better qualified by 



A Memoir 



43 



intellectual power, energy and purity of character, 
knowledge of men, a great combination of personal 
qualities, a frank, high-spirited, manly bearing, keen 
sense of honor, the power of attracting and winning 
men, united with a vast experience in affairs, such 
as no man (but John Quincy Adams) now living 
has had and no man in this country can ever have 
again, — I say it is proved that a man better quali- 
fied by an extraordinary combination of advantages 
to administer the government than any man now 
living, or any man we can ever produce again, can 

be beaten by anybody It has taken forty 

years of public life to prepare such a man for the 
Presidency, and the result is that he can be beaten 
by anybody — Mr. Polk is anybody — he is Mr. 
Quelconque." 

I do not venture to quote the most burning 
sentences of this impassioned letter. It shows 
that Motley had not only become interested most 
profoundly in the general movements of parties, 
but that he had followed the course of political 
events which resulted in the election of Mr. Polk 
with careful study, and that he was already look- 
ing forward to the revolt of the slave States which 
occurred fifteen years later. The letter is full of 
fiery eloquence, now and then extravagant and 
even violent in expression, but throbbing with a 
generous heat which shows the excitable sj)irit of 



Section VI. 
1844. 



Letter to 
Mr. Park 
Beujamin. 



44 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section VI. 
184-t. 

Letter to 
Mr. Park 
Benjamin. 



a man who wishes to be proud of his country and 
does not wish to keep his temper when its acts 
make him ashamed of it He is disgusted and in- 
dignant to the last degree at seeing "Mr. Quel- 
conque " chosen over the illustrious statesman who 
was his favorite candidate. But all his indigna- 
tion cannot repress a sense of humor which was one 
of his marked characteristics. After fatiguing his 
vocabulary with hard usage, after his unsparing 
denunciation of " the very dirty politics " which 
he finds mixed up with our popular institutions, he 
says, — it must be remembered that this was an 
offhand letter to one nearly connected with him, — 
"All these things must in short, to use the energetic 
lan^uao-e of the Balm of Columbia advertisement, 
' bring every generous thinking youth to that heavy 
sinking gloom which not even the loss of property 
can produce, but only the loss of hair, which brings 
on premature decay, causing many to shrink from 
being uncovered, and even to shun society, to avoid 
the jests and sneers of their acquaintances. The 
remainder of their lives is consequently spent in 
retirement.' " 

He continues : " Before dropping the subject, 
and to show the perfect purity of my motives, I 
will add that I am not at all anxious about the 
legislation of the new government. I desired the 
election of Clay as a moral triumph, and because 



A Memoir. 



45 



the administration of the country, at this moment 
of ten thousand times more importance than its 
legislation, would have been placed in pure, strong, 
and determiued hands." 

Then comes a dash of that satirical and some- 
what cynical way of feeling which he had not as 
yet outgrown. He had been speaking about the 
general want of attachment to the Union and the 
absence of the sentiment of loyalty as bearing on 
the probable dissolution of the Union. 

"I don't mean to express any opinions on these 
matters — I have n't got any. It seems to me that 
the best way is to look at the hodge-podge, be good- 
natured if possible, and laugh, 

As from the height of contemplation 
We view the feeble joints men totter on. 

I began a tremendous political career during the 
election, having made two stump speeches of an 
hour and a half each, — after you went away, — 
one in Dedham town-hall and one in Jamaica 
Plain, with such eminent success that many invi- 
tations came to me from the surrounding villages, 
and if I had continued in active political life I 
might have risen to be vote-distributor, or fence- 
viewer, or selectman, or hog-reeve, or something of 
the kind." 

The letter from which the above passages are 



Section VI. 
1844. 



Letter to 
Mr. Park 
Benjamin. 



46 



John Lotlirop Motley. 



Section VI. 
1844. 

Letter to 
Mr. Park 
Benjamin. 



quoted gives the same portrait of the writer, only 
seen in profile, as it were, which we have already 
seen drawn in full face in the story of " Morton's 
Hope." It is charged with that soeva indignatio 
which at times verges on misanthropic contempt 
for its objects, not unnatural to a high-spirited 
young man who sees his lofty ideals confronted 
with the ignoble facts which strew the highways of 
political life. But we can recognize real conviction 
and the deepest feeling beneath his scornful rhet- 
oric and his bitter laugh. He was no more a mere 
dilettante than Swift himself, but now and then in 
the midst of his most serious thought some absurd 
or grotesque image will obtrude itself, and one is 
reminded of the lines on the monument of Gay 
rather than of the fierce epitaph of the Dean of 
Saint Patrick's. 



A Memoir. 



47 



VII. 

First Historical and Critical Essays. — Peter the 
Great. — Novels of Balzac. — Polity of the Puri- 
tans. (184^-1847.) 

Mr. Motley's first serious effort in historical 
composition was an article of fifty pages in the 
North American Eeview for October, 1845. This 
was nominally a notice of two works, one on Eussia, 
the other A Memoir of the Life of Peter the Great, 
It is however a narrative rather than a criticism, a 
rapid, continuous, brilliant, almost dramatic narra- 
tive. If there had been any question as to whether 
the young novelist who had missed his first mark 
had in him the elements which might sjive him 
success as an author, this essay would have settled 
the question. It shows throughout that the writer 
has made a thorough study of his subject, but it is 
written with an easy and abundant, yet scholarly 
freedom, not as if he were surrounded by his au- 
thorities and picking out his material piece by 
piece, but rather as if it were the overflow of long- 
pursued and well-remembered studies recalled with- 
out effort and poured forth almost as a recreation. 



Sect. VII. 

1845. 



Essay in the 
N. A. Review. 



Peter tlie 
Great. 



48 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. VII. 
1845. 

Essay ; 
Peter the 
Great. 



Style of this 
article. 



As he betrayed or revealed his personality in his 
first novel, so in this first effort in another depart- 
ment of literature he showed in epitome his quali- 
ties as a historian and a biographer. The hero of 
his narrative makes his entrance at once in his 
character as the shipwright of Saardam, on the oc- 
casion of a visit of the great Duke of Marlborough. 
The portrait instantly arrests attention. - His ideal 
personages had been drawn in such a sketchy way, 
they presented so many imperfectly harmonized 
features, that they never became real, with the ex- 
ception of course of the story-teller himself But 
the vigor with which the presentment of the im- 
perial ship-carpenter, the sturdy, savage, eager, 
fiery Peter, was given in the few opening sentences, 
showed the movement of the hand, the glow of the 
color, that were in due time to display on a broader 
canvas the full-length portraits of William the 
Silent and of John of Barneveld. The style of 
the whole article is rich, fluent, picturesque, with 
light touches of humor here and there, and perhaps 
a trace or two of youthful jauntiness, not quite as 
yet outgrown. His illustrative poetical quotations 
are mostly from Shakespeare, — from Milton and 
Byron also in a passage or two, — and now and then 
one is reminded that he is not unfamiliar with 
Carlyle's Sartor Eesartus and the French Eevolu- 
tion of the same unmistakable writer, more per- 



A Memoir. 



49 



haps by the way in which phrases borrowed from 
other authorities are set in the text than by any 
more important evidence of unconscious imitation. 

The readers who had shaken their heads over the 
unsuccessful story of " Morton's Hope " were star- 
tled by the appearance of this manly and scholarly 
essay. This young man, it seemed, had been study- 
ing, — studying with careful accuracy, with broad 
purpose. He could paint a cliaracter with the ruddy 
life-blood coloring it as warmly as it glows in the 
cheeks of one of Van der Heist's burgomasters. He 
could sweep the horizon in a wide general outlook, 
and manage his perspective and his lights and 
shadows so as to j)lace and accent his special sub- 
ject with its due relief and just relations. It was 
a sketch, or rather a study for a larger picture, but 
it betrayed the hand of a master. The feeling of 
many was that expressed in the words of Mr. 
Longfellow in his review of the " Twice-Told 
Tales " of the unknown young writer, Natlianiel 
Hawthorne: "When a new star rises in the heavens, 
people gaze after it for a season with the naked 

eye, and with such telescopes as they may find 

This star is but newly risen ; and erelong the ob- 
servation of numerous star-gazers, perched up on 
arm-chairs and editor's tables, will inform the world 
of its magnitude and its place in the heaven of" — 



Sect. VII. 
1845. 



His Essav 
applauded. 



50 



John Lothrop Motley. 



not poetry in this instance, but that serene and 
unclouded region of the firmament where shine 
unchanging the names of Herodotus and Thu- 
cidydes. Those who had always believed in their 
brilliant schoolmate and friend at last felt them- 
selves justified in their faith. The artist that sent 
this unframed picture to be hung in a corner of the 
literary gallery was equal to larger tasks. There 
was but one voice in the circle that surrounded the 
young Essayist. He must redeem his pledge, he 
can and will redeem it, if he will only follow the 
bent of his genius and grapple with the heroic 
labor of writing a great history. 

And this was the achievement he was already 
meditating. 

In the mean time he was studying history for its 
facts and principles, and fiction for its scenery and 
portraits. In the North American Keview for July, 
1847, is a long and characteristic article on Balzac, 
of whom he was an admirer, but with no blind 
worship. The readers of this great story-teller, who 
was so long in obtaining recognition, who " made 
twenty assaults upon fame and had forty books 
killed under him " before he achieved success, will 
find his genius fully appreciated and fairly weighed 
in this discriminating essay. A few brief extracts 
will show its quality. 

" Balzac is an artist, and only an artist. In his 



A Memoir 



51 



tranquil, unimpassioned, remorseless diagnosis of 
morbid phenomena, in his cool method of treating 
the morbid anatomy of the heart, in his curiously 
accurate dissection of the passions, in the patient 
and painful attention with which, stethoscope in 
hand, finger on pulse, eye everywhere, you see him 
watching every symptom, alive to every sound and 
every breath, and in the scientific accuracy with 
which he portrays the phenomena which have been 
the subject of his investigation, — in all this calm 
and conscientious study of nature he often reminds 
us of Goethe. Balzac, however, is only an artist. 
.... He is neither moral nor immoral, but a calm 
and profound observer of human society and human 
passions, and a minute, patient, and powerful delin- 
eator of scenes and characters in the world before 
his eyes. His readers must moralize for them- 
selves. .... It is, perhaps, his defective style more 
than anything else which will prevent his becom- 
ing a classic, for style above all other qualities 
seems to embalm for posterity. As for his phi- 
losophy, his principles, moral, political, or social, we 
repeat that he seems to have none whatever. He 
looks for the picturesque and the striking. He 
studies sentiments and sensations from an artistic 
point of view. He is a physiognomist, a physiolo- 
gist, a bit of an anatomist, a bit of a mesmerist, a 
bit of a geologist, a Flemish painter, an upholsterer, 



Sect. VII. 

184.7. 



Criticism of 
Balzac. 



52 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. VII. 
1849. 



Essay; "Pol- 
ity of the 
Fui-itans." 



a micrological, misanthropical, sceptical philoso- 
pher ; but he is no moralist, and certainly no re- 
former." 

Another article contributed by Mr. Motley to 
the ;N"orth American Eeview is to be found in the 
number for October, 1849. It is nominally a re- 
view of Talvi's (Mrs. Eobinson's) Geschicht der 
Colonisation von New England, but in reality an 
essay on the " Polity of the Puritans," — an histori- 
cal disquisition on the principles of self-government 
evolved in New England, broad in its views, elo- 
quent in its language. Its spirit is thoroughly 
American, and its estimate of the Puritan character 
is not narrowed by the near-sighted liberalism 
which sees the past in the pitiless light of the 
present, — which looks around at high noon and 
finds fault with early dawn for its long and dark 
shadows. Here is a sentence or two from the ar- 
tide : — 

" With all the faults of the system devised by 
the Puritans, it was a practical system. With all 
their foibles, with all their teasing, tyrannical, and 
arbitrary notions, the Pilgrims were lovers of liberty 

as well as sticklers for authority Nowhere 

can a better description of liberty be found than 
that given by Winthrop, in his defence of himself 
before the General Court on a charge of arbitrary 
conduct. 'Nor would I have you mistake your 



A Memoir. 



53 



own liberty,' he says. * There is a freedom of doing 
what we list, without regard to law or justice ; this 
liberty is indeed inconsistent with authority ; but 
civil, moral, and federal liberty consists in every 
man's enjoying his property and having the benefit 
of the laws of his country ; which is very consistent 
with a due subjection to the civil magistrate.' .... 

" We enjoy an inestimable advantage in America. 
One can be a republican, a democrat, without being 
a radical. A radical, one who would iqoroot, is a 
man whose trade is dangerous to society. Here is 
but little to uproot. The trade cannot flourish. 
All classes are conservative by necessity, for none 
can wish to change the structure of our polity 

" The country without a past cannot be intoxi- 
cated by visions of the past of other lands. Upon 
this absence of the past it seems to us that much 
of the security of bur institutions depends. Noth- 
ing interferes with the development of what is now 
felt to be the true principle of government, the will 
of the people legitimately expressed. To establish 
that great truth, nothing was to be torn down, noth- 
ing to be uprooted. It grew up in New England 
out of the seed unconsciously planted by the first 
Pilgrims, was not crushed out by the weight of a 
thousand years of error spread over the whole con- 
tinent, and the Eevolution was proclaimed and rec- 
ognized." 



Sect. VII. 
1849. 

Essay ; 
" Polity of 
the Puri- 
tans." 



54 



Jolin Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. VIII. 
1847. 



Friendship 
with J. L. 
Stackpole. 



VIII. 

Joseph Lewis Stackjoole, the friend of Motley. His 
sudden death. — Motley in the Massachusetts House 
of Representatives. — Second Novel, — ^' Merry- 
Mount, A Romance of the Massachusetts ColonyJ^ 

(1847- 1849 ■) 

The intimate friendships of early manhood are 
not very often kept up among our people. The 
eager pursuit of fortune, position, office, separates 
young friends, and the indoor home life imprisons 
them in the domestic circle so generally that it is 
quite exceptional to find two grown men who are 
like brothers, — or rather unlike most brothers, in 
being constantly found together. An exceptional 
instance of such a more than fraternal relation was 
seen in the friendship of Mr. Motley and Mr. Jo- 
seph Lewis Stackpole. Mr. William Amory, who 
knew them both well, has kindly furnished me 
with some recollections, which I cannot improve 
by changing his own language. 

" Their intimacy began in Europe, and they re- 
turned to this country in 1835. In 1837 they 
married sisters, and this cemented their intimacy, 



A Memoir. 



55 



which continued to Stackpole's death in 1847. The 
contrast in the temperament of the two friends — 
the one sensitive and irritable, and the other al- 
ways cool and good-natured — only increased their 
mutual attachment to each other, and Motley's de- 
pendence upon Stackpole. Never were two friends 
more constantly together or more affectionately 
fond of each other. As Stackpole was about eight 
years older than Motley, and much less impulsive 
and more discreet, his death was to his friend 
irreparable, and at the time an overwhelming 
blow." 

Mr. Stackpole was a man of great intelligence, 
of remarkable personal attractions, and amiable 
character. His death was a loss to Motley even 
greater than he knew, for he needed just such a 
friend, older, calmer, more experienced in the ways 
of the world, and above all capable of thoroughly 
understanding him and exercising a wholesome in- 
fluence over his excitable nature without the seem- 
ing of a Mentor preaching to a Telemachus. Mr. 
Stackpole was killed by a railroad accident on the 
20th of July, 1847. 

In the same letter Mr. Amory refers to a very 
different experience in Mr. Motley's life, — his one 
year of service as a member of the Massachusetts 
House of Eepresentatives, 1849. 

"In respect to the one term during Avhich he 



Sect. VIII. 

1847. 



Death of J. L. 
Stackpole. 



56 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. VIII. 
184.9. 

Mr. Motley 
in the Mass. 
H. of Repre- 
sentatives. 



His Ueport 
en Education. 



Mr. Bout- 
well's letter. 



was a member of the Massacliiisetts House of 
Kepresentatives, I can recall only one thing, to 
which he often and laughingly alluded. Motley, 
as the Chairman of the Committee on Education, 
made, as he thought, a most masterly Eeport. It 
was very elaborate, and, as he supposed, unanswer- 
able ; but Boutwell, then a young man from some 
country town [Groton, Mass.], rose, and as Motley 
always said, demolished the Eeport, so that he was 
unable to defend it against the attack. You can 
imagine his disgust, after the pains he had taken 
to render it unassailable, to find himself, as he 
expressed it, ' on his own dunghill,' ignominiously 
beaten. While the result exalted his opinion of 
the speech-making faculty of a Eepresentative of a 
common school education, it at the same time cured 
him of any ambition for political promotion in 
Massachusetts." 

To my letter of inquiry about this matter, Hon. 
George S. Boutwell courteously returned the follow- 



ing answer 



Boston, October 14, 1878. 
My dear Sir, — As my memory serves me, Mr. 
Motley was a member of the Massachusetts House 
of Eepresentatives in the year 1847 [1849]. It 
may be well to consult the Manual for that year. 
I recollect the controversy over the Eeport from 
the Committee on Education. 



A Memoir. 



57 



His failure was not clue to his want of faculty or 
to the vigor of his opponents. 

In truth he espoused the weak side of the ques- 
tion and the unpopular one also. His proposition 
was to endow the colleges at the expense of the 
fund for the support of the common schools. Fail- 
ure was inevitable. Neither Webster nor Choate 
could have carried the bill. 

Very truly, 

GEO. S. BOUTWELL. 

No one could be more ready and willing to rec- 
ognize his own failures than Motley. He was as 
honest and manly, perhaps I may say as sympa- 
thetic with the feeling of those about him, on this 
occasion, as was Charles Lamb, who, sitting with his 
sister in the front of the pit, on the night when his 
farce was damned at its first representation, gave 
way to the common feeling, and hissed and hooted 
lustily with the others around him. It was what 
might be expected from his honest and truthful 
nature, sometimes too severe in judging itself. 

The commendation bestowed upon Motley's his- 
torical Essays in the North American Eeview must 
have gone far towards compensating him for the ill 
success of his earlier venture. It pointed clearly 
towards the field in which he was to gather his 
laurels. And it was in the year following the pub- 



Sect. VIII. 
1849. 



His Report 
on Educa- 
tion. 



He accepts 

its failure 
cheerfully. 



58 



Jolm Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. VIII. 
1849. 



His second 
novel, 
" Merry- 
Mount." 



lication of the first Essay, or about that time (1846), 
that he began collecting materials for a history of 
Holland. 

Whether to tell the story of men that have lived 
and of events that have happened, or to create the 
characters and invent the incidents of an imaginary 
tale be the higlier task, we need not stop to discuss. 
But the young author was just now like the great 
actor in Sir Joshua's picture, between the allure- 
ments of Thalia and Melpomeite, still doubtful 
whether he was to be a romancer or a historian. 

The tale of which the title is given at the 
beoinniuCT of this section had been written sev- 
eral years before the date of its publication. It 
is a great advance in certain respects over the 
first novel, but wants the peculiar interest which 
belonged to that as a . partially autobiographical 
memoir. The story is no longer disjointed and 
impossible. It is carefully studied in regard to its 
main facts. It has less to remind us of "Vivian 
Grey " and "Pelham," and more that recalls "Wood- 
stock" and " Kenilworth." The personages were 
many of them historical, though idealized ; the oc- 
currences were many of them such as the record 
authenticated; the localities were drawn largely 
from nature. The story betrays marks of haste or 
carelessness in some portions, though others are 
elaborately studied. His preface shows that the 



A Memoir. 



59 



reception of his first book had made him timid and 
sensitive about the fate of the second, and explains 
and excuses what might be found fault with, to dis- 
arm the criticism he had some reason to fear. 

That old watch-dog of our American literature, 
the North American Review, always ready with 
lambent phrases in stately " Articles " for native 
talent of a certain pretension, and wagging its ap- 
pendix of " Critical Notices " kindly at the advent 
of humbler merit, treated " Merry-Mount " with the 
distinction implied in a review of nearly twenty 
pages. This was a great contrast to the brief and 
slighting notice of " Morton's Hope." The reviewer 
thinks the author's descriptive power wholly exceeds 
his conception of character and invention of circum- 
stances. " He dwells, perhaps, too long and fondly 
upon his imagination of the landscape as it was be- 
fore the stillness of the forest had been broken by 
the axe of the settler ; but the picture is so finely 
drawn, with so much beauty of language and purity 
of sentiment, that we cannot blame him for linger- 
ing upon the scene The story is not managed 

with much skill, but it has variety enough of inci- 
dent and character, and is told with so much live- 
liness that few will be inclined to lay it down before 

reaching the conclusion The writer certainly 

needs practice in elaborating the details of a con- 
sistent and interesting novel ; but in many respects 



Sect. VIII. 
1849. 



His second 
novel, 
" Merry 
Mount." 



Criticisms 
upon it. 



60 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. VIII. 
1849. 



Still collect- 
iug materials 
for a history. 



he is well qualified for the task, and we shall be 
glad to meet him again on the half-historical ground 
he has chosen. His present work, certainly, is not 
a fair specimen of what he is able to accomplish, 
and its failure, or partial success, ought only to in- 
spirit him for further effort." 

The " half-historical ground " he had chosen had 
already led him to the entrance into the broader 
domain of history. The " further effort " for which 
he was to be inspirited had already begun. He had 
been for some time, as was before mentioned, col- 
lecting materials for the work which was to cast all 
his former attempts into the kindly shadow of ob- 
livion save when from time to time the light of his 
brilliant after success is thrown upon them to illus- 
trate the path by which it was at length attained. 



A Memoir. 



61 



IX. 

Plan of a History. — Letter's. (1850.) 

' The reputation of Mr. Prescott was now coexten- 
sive with the realm of scholarship. The Histories 
of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella and of the 
Conquest of Mexico had met with a reception 
which might well tempt the ambition of a young 
writer to emulate it, but which was not likely to 
be awarded to any second candidate who should 
enter the field in rivalry with the great and uni- 
versally popular historian. But this was the field 
on which Mr. Motley was to venture. 

After he had chosen the subject of the history he 
contemplated, he found that Mr. Prescott was occu- 
pied with a kindred one, so that there might be too 
near a coincidence between them. I must borrow 
from Mr. Ticknor's beautiful Life of Prescott the 
words which introduce a letter of Motley's to Mr. 
William Amory, who has kindly allowed me also 
to make use of it. 

"The moment, therefore, that he [Mr. Motley] 
was aware of this condition of things, and the con- 
sequent possibility that there might be an untoward 
interference in their plans, he took the same frank 



Section I\, 
185U. 



Relations 
with Mr. 
Prescott. 



62 



John Lothrop Motley. 



SECTIOjS IX. 

1850. 



Mr. Prescott 

encourages 

him. 



Mr. Motley's 
letter to 
Mr. William 
Amory. 



and honorable course with Mr. Prescott that Mr. 
Prescott had taken in relation to Mr. Irving, when 
he found that they had both been contemplating a 
' History of the Conquest of Mexico.' The result 
was the same. Mr. Prescott, instead of treating the 
matter as an interference, earnestly encouraged Mr. 
Motley to go on, and placed at his disposition such 
of the books in his library as could be most useful 
to him. How amply and promptly he did it, Mr. 
Motley's own account will best show. It is in a 
letter dated at Eome, 26th February, 1859, the day 
he heard of Mr. Prescott's death, and was addressed 
to his intimate friend, Mr. William Amory, of Bos- 
ton, Mr. Prescott's much loved brother-in-law." 

" It seems to me but as yesterday," Mr. Motley 
writes, " though it must be now twelve years ago, 
that I was talking with our ever-lamented friend 
Stackpole about my intention of writing a history 
upon a subject to which I have since that time 
been devoting myself. I had then made already 
some general studies in reference to it, without 
beino- in the least aware that Prescott had the in- 
tention of writing the ' History of Philip the Sec- 
ond.' Stackpole had heard the fact, and that large 
preparations had already been made for the work, 
although 'Peru' had not yet been published. I 
felt naturally much disappointed. I was conscious 



A Memoir. 



63 



of the immense disadvantage to myself of making 
my appearance, probably at the same time, before 
the public, with a work not at all similar in plan 
to Philip the Second, but which must of necessity 
traverse a portion of the same ground. 

"My first thought was inevitably, as it were, 
only of myself. It seemed to me that I had noth- 
ing to do but to abandon at once a cherished dream, 
and probably to renounce authorship. For I had 
not first made up my mind to write a history, and 
then cast about to take up a subject. My subject 
had taken me up, drawn me on, and absorbed me into 
itself. It was necessary for me, it seemed, to write 
the book I had been thinking much of, even if it were 
destined to fall dead from the press, and I had no 
inclination or interest to write any other. When I 
had made up my mind accordingly, it then occurred 
to me that Prescott might not be pleased that I 
should come forward upon his ground. It is true 
that no announcement of his intentions had been 
made, and that he had not, I believe, even com- 
menced his preliminary studies for Philip. At the 
same time I thought it would be disloyal on my 
part not to go to him at once, confer with him on 
the subject, and if I should find a shadow of dis- 
satisfaction on his mind at my proposition, to aban- 
don my plan altogether. 

" I had only the slightest acquaintance with him 



Section IX. 
1850. 



Letter to 
Mr. Amory. 



64 



John Lotlirop Mx)tley. 



Section IX. 
1850. 

Letter to 
Mr. Amory. 



Mr. Pres- 
cott's gener- 
ous conduct. 



at that time. I was comparatively a young man, 
and certainly not entitled on any ground to more 
than the common courtesy which Prescott never 
could refuse to any one. But he received me with 
such a frank and ready and liberal sympathy, and 
such an open-hearted, guileless expansiveness, that 
I felt a personal affection for him from that hour. 
I remember the interview as if it had taken place 
yesterday. It was in his father's house, in his own 
library, looking on the garden-house and garden, — 
honored father and illustrious son, — alas ! all num- 
bered with the things that were ! He assured me 
that he had not the slightest objection whatever to 
my plan, that he wished me every success, and that, 
if there were any books in his library bearing on 
my subject that I liked to use, they were entirely 
at my service. After I had expressed my gratitude 
for his kindness and cordiality, by which I had 
been in a very few moments set completely at ease, 
— so far as my fears of his disapprobation went, — 
I also very naturally stated my opinion that the 
danger was entirely mine, and that it was rather 
wilful of me thus to risk such a collision at my 
first venture, the probable consequence of which 
was utter shipwreck. I recollect how kindly and 
warmly he combated this opinion, assuring me that 
no two books, as he said, ever injured each other, 
and encourasrino- me in the warmest and most ear- 

o o 



A Memoir 



65 



nest manner to proceed on the course I had marked 
out for myself. 

" Had the result of that interview been different, 
— had he distinctly stated, or even vaguely hinted, 
that it would be as well if I should select some 
other topic, or had he only sprinkled me with the 
cold water of conventional and commonplace en- 
couragement, — I should have gone from him with 
a chill upon my mind, and, no doubt, have laid 
down the pen at once ; for, as I have already said, 
it was not that I cared about writing a history, but 
that I felt an inevitable impulse to write one 'par- 
ticular history. 

" You know how kindly he always spoke of 
and to me ; and the generous manner in which, 
without the slightest hint from me, and entirely 
unexpected by me, he attracted the eyes of his hosts 
of readers to my forthcoming work, by so hand- 
somely alluding to it in the Preface to his own, must 
be almost as fresh in your memory as it is in mine. 

" And although it seems easy enough for a man 
of world-wide reputation thus to extend the right 
hand of fellowship to an unknown and struggling 
aspirant, yet I fear that the history of literature 
will show that such instances of disinterested kind- 
ness are as rare as they are noble." 

It was not from any feeling that Mr. Motley was 



Section IX. 
1850. 

Letter to 
Mr. Amory. 



Mr. Pres- 
cott's kind- 
ness. 



66 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section IX. 
1850. 



Mr. Prescott 
recognizes 
Mr. Motley's 
force as a 
competitor. 



a young writer from whose rivalry he had nothing 
to apprehend. Mr. Amory says that Prescott ex- 
pressed himself very decidedly to the effect that an 
author who had written such descriptive passages 
as were to be found in Mr. Motley's published ^\Tit- 
ings was not to be undervalued as a competitor by 
any one. The reader who will turn to the descrip- 
tion of Charles Eiver in the eighth chapter of the 
second volume of " Merry Mount/' or of the au- 
tumnal woods in the sixteenth chapter of the same 
volume, will see good reason for Mr. Prescott's ap- 
preciation of the force of the rival whose advent he 
so heartily and generously welcomed. 



A Memoir. 



67 



X. 



Historical Studies in Europe. — Letter from Brussels. 
{1851-1856.) 

After working for several years on his projected 
History of the Dutch Eepublic, he found that, in 
order to do justice to his subject, he must have re- 
course to the authorities to be found only in the 
libraries and state archives of Europe. In the year 
1851 he left America with his family, to begin his 
task over again, throwing aside all that he had 
already done, and following up his new course of 
investigations at Berlin, Dresden, the Hague, and 
Brussels during several succeeding years. I do not 
know that I can give a better idea of his mode of 
life during this busy period, his occupations, his 
state of mind, his objects of interest outside of his 
special work, than by making the following extracts 
from a long letter to myself, dated Brussels, 20th 
November, 1853. 

After some personal matters he continues : — 
" I don't really know what to say to you. I am 
in a town which, for aught I know, may be very 
gay. I don't know a living soul in it. We have 



Section X. 
1851-1856. 



Visits Europe 
to study for 
his work. 



Writes from 
Brussels. 



68 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section X. 
1853. 



Letter fi'om 
Brussels. 



not a single acquaintance in the place, and we 
glory in the fact. There is something rather sub- 
lime in thus floating on a single spar in the wide 
sea of a populous, busy, fuming, fussy Avorld like 
this. At any rate it is consonant to both our 
tastes. You may suppose, however, that I find it 
rather difficult to amuse my friends out of the in- 
cidents of so isolated an existence. Our daily 
career is very regular and monotonous. Our life 
is as stagnant as a Dutch canal. Not that I com- 
plain of it, — on the contrary, the canal may be 
richly freighted with merchandise and be a short 
cut to the ocean of abundant and perpetual knowl- 
edge ; but, at the same time, few points rise above 
the level of so regular a life, to be worthy of your 
notice. You must, therefore, allow me to meander 
along the meadows of commonplace. Don't expect 
anything of the impetuous and boiling style. We 
go it weak here. I don't know whether you were 
ever in Brussels. It is a striking, picturesque 
town, built up a steep promontory, the old part at 
the bottom, very dingy and mouldy, the new part 
at the top, very showy and elegant. Nothing can 
be more exquisite in its way than the grande place 
in the very heart of the city, surrounded with those 
toppling, zigzag, ten-storied buildings bedizened all 
over with ornaments and emblems so peculiar to the 
Netherlands, with the brocaded Hotel de Ville on 



A Memoir. 



69 



one side, with its impossible spire rising some three 
hundred and seventy feet into the air and embroid- 
ered to the top with the delicacy of needle-work, 
sugar-work, spider-work, or what you will. I haunt 
this place because it is my scene, — my theatre. 
Here were enacted so many deep tragedies, so many 
stately dramas, and even so many farces, which 
have been familiar to me so long that I have got 
to imagine myself invested with a kind of property 
in the place, and look at it as if it were merely 
the theatre with the coulisses, machinery, drapery, 
etc., for representing scenes which have long since 
vanished, and which no more enter the minds of 
the men and women who are actually moving 
across its pavements than if they had occurred in 
the moon. When I say that I knew no soul in 
Brussels I am perhaps wrong. With the present 
generation I am not familiar. En revanche, the 
dead men of the place are my intimate friends. I 
am at home in any cemetery. With the fellows 
of the sixteenth century I am on the most familiar 
terms. Any ghost that ever flits by night across 
the moonlight square is at once hailed by me as 
a man and a brother. I call him by his Chris- 
tian name at once. When you come out of this 
place, however, which, as I said, is in the heart of 
the town — the antique gem in the modern set- 
ting — you may go either up or down — if you go 



Section X. 
1853. 



Letter from 
Brussels. 



70 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section X. 
1853. 

Letter from 
Brussels. 



down you will find yourself in the very nastiest 
complications of lanes and culs-de-sacs possible — 
a dark entanglement of gin-shops, beer-houses, and 
hovels, — through which charming valley dribbles 
the Senne (whence, I suppose, is derived Senna), 
the most nauseous little river in the world — which! 
receives all the outpourings of all the drains and 
houses and is then converted into beer for the 
inhabitants, all the many breweries being directly 
upon its edge. If you go up the hill instead of 
down you come to an arrangement of squares, pal- 
aces, and gardens as trim and fashionable as you 
will find in Europe. Thus you see that our Cybele 
sits with her head crowned with very stately tow- 
ers and her feet in a tub of very dirty water. 

" My habits here for the present year are very 
regular. I came here, having, as I thought, finished 
my work, or rather the first Part (something like 
three or four volumes, 8vo), but I find so much 
original matter here, and so many emendations to 
make, that I am ready to despair. However, there 
is nothing for it but to penelopize, pull to pieces, 
and stitch away again. Whatever may be the re- 
sult of my labor, nobody can say that I have not 
worked like a brute beast, — but I don't care for 
the result. The labor is in itself its own reward 
and all I want. I go day after day to the archives 
here (as I went all summer at the Hague) studying 



A Meinoir. 



71 



the old letters and documents of the fifteenth cen- 
tury. Here I remain among my fellow-worms, 
feeding on these musty mulberry-leaves, out of 
which we are afterwards to spin our silk. How 
can you expect anything interesting from such a 
human cocoon ? It is, however, not without its 
amusement in a mouldy sort of way, this reading 
of dead letters. It is something to read the real, 
bona fide signs-manual of such fellows as William 
of Orange, Count Egmont, Alexander Farnese, 
Philip II., Cardinal Granvelle, and the rest of them. 
It gives a ' realizing sense,' as the Americans have it. 
.... There are not many public resources of amuse- 
ment in this place, — if we wanted them, — which 
we don't. I miss the Dresden Gallery very much, 
and it makes me sad to think that I shall never 
look at the face of the Sistine Madonna acfain, — 
that picture beyond all pictures in the world — in 
which the artist certainly did get to heaven and 
painted a face which was never seen on earth — so 

pathetic, so gentle, so passionless, so prophetic 

There are a few good Eubenses here, — but the 
great wealth of that master is in Antwerp. The 
great picture of the Descent from the Cross is free 
again after having been ten years in the repair- 
ing room. It has come out in very good condi- 
tion. What a picture ! It seems to me as if I 
had reaUy stood at the cross and seen Mary weep- 



Section X. 
1853. 



Letter from 
Brussels. 



72 



Joliu Lothrop Motley. 



Section X. 
1853. 



Letter from 
Brussels. 



ing on John's shoulder, and Magdalen receiving the 
dead body of the Saviour in her arms. Never was 
the grand tragedy represented in so profound and 
dramatic a manner. For it is not only in his color 
in which this man so easily surpasses all the world, 
but in his life-like, flesh-and-blood action, — the 
tragic power of his composition. And is it not 
appalling to think of the "large constitution of 
this man," when you reflect on the acres of canvas 
which he has covered ? How inspiriting to see 
with what muscular, masculine vigor this splendid 
Fleming rushed in and plucked up drowning Art 
by the locks when it was sinking in the trashy sea 
of such creatures as the Luca Giordanos and Pietro 
Cortonas and the like. Well might Guido exclaim, 

'The fellow mixes blood with his colors ! ' How 

providentially did the man come in and invoke liv- 
ing, breathing, moving men and women out of his 
canvas ! Sometimes he is ranting and exaggerated, 
as are all men of great genius who wrestle with 
Nature so boldly. No doubt his heroines are more 
expansively endowed than would be thought gen- 
teel in our country, where cryptogams are so much 
in fashion, nevertheless there is always something 
very tremendous about him, and very often much 
that is sublime, pathetic, and moving. I defy any 
one of the average amount of imagination and sen- 
timent to stand long before the Descent from the 



A Memoir. 



73 



Cross without being moved more nearly to tears 
than he would care to acknowledge. As for color, 
his effects are as sure as those of the sun rising in 
a tropical landscape. There is something quite 
genial in the cheerful sense of his own omnipo- 
tence which always inspired him. There are a few 
fine pictures of his here, and I go in sometimes 
of a raw, foggy morning merely to warm myself in 
the blaze of their beauty." 

I have been more willing to give room to this 
description of Eubens's pictures and the effect they 
produced upon Motley, because there is a certain 
affinity between those sumptuous and glowing 
works of art and the prose pictures of the historian 
who so admired them. He was himself a colorist 
in language, and called up the image of a great per- 
sonage or a splendid pageant of the past with the 
same affluence, the same rich vitality, that floods 
and warms the vast areas of canvas over which the 
full-fed genius of Eubens disported itself in the 
luxury of imaginative creation. 



Section X. 
1853. 

Letter from 
Brussels. 



74 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section XI. 
1856. 

His manu- 
script fin- 
ished. 



Seeks a pub- 
Usher. 



Publishes at 
his own ex- 
pense. 



Mr. Murray. 



XI. 



Publication of his first Historical Work, ^^ Rise of 
the Dutch Re'piiblicP — Its Reception. — Critical 
Notices. — His Visit to America. {1856-1857.) 

The labor of ten years was at last finished. 
Carrying his formidable manuscript with him, — 
and how formidable the manuscript which melts 
down into three solid octavo volumes is, only writers 
and publishers know, — he knocked at the gate of 
that terrible fortress from which Lintot and Curll 
and Tonson looked down on the authors of an older 
generation. So large a work as the History of the 
Eise of the Dutch Eepublic, offered for the press by 
an author as yet unknown to the British public, 
could hardly expect a warm welcome from the great 
dealers in literature as merchandise. Mr. Murray 
civilly declined the manuscript which was offered 
to him, and it was published at its author's expense 
by Mr. John Chapman. The time came when the 
positions of the first-named celebrated publisher and 
the unknown writer were reversed. Mr. Murray 
wrote to Mr. Motley asking to be allowed to publish 
his second great work, the History of the United 



A Memoir 



75 



Netherlands, expressing at the same time his regret 
at what he candidly called his mistake in the lirst 
instance, and thus they were at length brought into 
business connection as well as the most asjreeable 
and friendly relations. An American edition was 
published by the Harpters at the same time as the 
London one. 

If the new work of the unknown author found it 
difficult to obtain a publisher, it was no sooner 
given to the public than it found an approving, an 
admiring, an enthusiastic world of readers, and a 
noble welcome at the colder hands of the critics. 

The Westminster Eeviewfor April, 1856, had for 
its leading article a paper by Mr. Froude, in which 
the critic awarded the highest praise to the work 
of the new historian. As one of the earliest as well 
as one of the most important recognitions of the 
work, I quote some of its judgments. 

" A history as complete as industry and genius 
can make it now lies before us of the first twenty 
years of the Eevolt of the United Provinces ; of the 
period in which those provinces finally conquered 
their independence and established the Eepublic of 
Holland. It has been the result of many years 
of silent, thoughtful, unobtrusive labor, and unless 
we are strangely mistaken, nnless we are our- 
selves altogether unfit for this office of criticising 
which we have here undertaken, the book is one 



Section XI. 
185G. 



" Rise of the 
Dutch Re- 
public "pub- 
lished in 
England and 
America. 



Its recep- 
tion. 



Mr. Fronde's 
critical ar- 
ticle. 



76 



John Lofhrop Motley. 



Section XI. 
1856. 

Mr. Froude 
warmly 
praises it. 



which will take its place among the finest histories 

in this or in any language All the essentials 

of a great w^riter Mr. Motley eminently possesses. 
His mind is broad, his industry unwearied. In 
power of dramatic description no modern historian, 
except perhaps Mr. Carlyle, surpasses him, and in 
analysis of character he is elaborate and distinct. 
His principles are those of honest love for all which 
is good and admirable in human character wherever 
he finds it, while he unaffectedly hates oppression, 
and despises selfishness with all his heart." 

After giving a slight analytical sketch of the 
series of events related in the history, Mr. Froude 
objects to only one of the historian's estimates, 
that, namely, of the course of Queen Elizabeth. " It 
is ungracious, however," he says, " even to find so 
slight a fault with these admirable volumes. Mr. 
Motley has wTitten without haste, with the leisurely 

composure of a master We now take our 

leave of Mr. Motley, desiring him only to accept 
our hearty thanks for these volumes, which we 
trust will soon take their place in every English 
library. Our quotations will have sufficed to show 
the ability of the writer. Of the scope and general 
character of his work we have given but a languid 
conception. The true merit of a great book must 
be learned from the book itself. Our part has been 
rather to select varied specimens of style and power 



A Memoir 



77 



Of Mr. Motley's antecedents we know nothing. If 
lie has previously appeared before the public, his 
reputation has not crossed the Atlantic. It will 
not be so now. We believe that we may promise 
him as warm a welcome among ourselves as he will 
receive even in America ; that his place will be at 
once conceded to him among the first historians in 
our common language." 

The faithful and unwearied Mr. Allibone has 
swept the whole field of contemporary criticism, 
and shown how wide and universal was the wel- 
come accorded to the hitherto unknown author. 
An article headed " Prescott and Motley," attrib- 
uted to M. Guizot, which must have been translated, 
I suppose, from his own language, judging by its 
freedom from French idioms, is to be found in the 
Edinburgh Eeview for January, 1857. The praise, 
not unmingied with criticisms, which that great 
historian bestowed upon Motley is less significant 
than the fact that he superintended a translation 
of the Eise of the Dutch Eepublic, and himself 
wrote the Introduction to it. 

A general chorus of approbation followed or ac- 
companied tliese leading voices. The reception of 
the work in Great Britain was a triumph. On the 
Continent, in addition to the tribute paid to it by 
M. Guizot, it was translated into Dutch, into Ger- 



Skction XI. 
1S5G. 



" Rise of the 
Dutch Re- 
public." 



Mr. AUi- 
bone's cita- 
tions. 



M. Guizot. 
superin- 
tends a 
translation. 



Translaf 

tions. 



78 



Johi Lothrop Motley. 



Section XI. 
1856. 

"Rise of the 
Dutch Re- 
public." 

Tlie North 

American 

Review. 



Dr. Lieber. 



man, and into Russian. At home his reception 
was not less hearty. The North American Eeview, 
which had set its foot on the semi-autobiographical 
medley which he called " Morton's Hope/' which 
had granted a decent space and a tepid recognition 
to his " semi-historical " romance, in which he had 
already given the reading public a taste of his 
quality as a narrator of real events and a delineator 
of real personages, — this old and awe-inspiring 
New England and more than New England repre- 
sentative of the Fates, found roomfor a long and most 
laudatory article, in which the son of one of our 
most distinguished historians did the honors of the 
venerable literary periodical to the new-comer, for 
whom the folding-doors of all the critical head- 
quarters Avere flying open as if of themselves. Mr. 
AUibone has recorded the opinions of some of our 
best scholars as expressed to him. 

Dr. Lieber wrote a letter to Mr. Allibone in the 
strongest terms of praise. I quote one passage 
which in the lioht of after events borrows a cruel 
siixnificance. 

" ConoTCSS and Parliament decree thanks for 
military exploits, — rarely for diplomatic achieve- 
ments. If they ever voted their thanks for books, 
— and what deeds have influenced the course of hu- 
man events more than some books ? — Motley ought 
to have the thanks of our Congress ; but I doubt 



A Memoir. 



79 



not that he has already the thanks of every Ameri- 
can who has read the work. It will leave its dis- 
tinct mark upon the American mind." 

Mr. Everett writes : — 

"Mr. Motley's History of the Dutch Eepublic 
is in my judgment a work of the highest merit. 
Unwearying research for years in the libraries of 
Europe, patience and judgment in arranging and 
digesting his materials, a fine historical tact, much 
skill in characterization, the perspective of narra- 
tion, as it may be called, and a vigorous style unite 
to make it a very capital work, and place the name 
of Motley by the side of those of our great histori- 
cal trio, — Bancroft, Irving, and Prescott." 

Mr. Irving, Mr. Bancroft, Mr. Sumner, Mr. 
Hillard, united their voices in the same strain of 
commendation. Mr. Prescott, whose estimate of 
the new History is of peculiar value for obvious 
reasons, writes to Mr. Allibone thus : — 

" The opinion of any individual seems super- 
fluous in respect to a work on the merits of which 
the public both at home and abroad have pro- 
nounced so unanimous a verdict. As Motley's 
path crosses my own historic field, I may be 
thought to possess some advantage over most 
critics in my familiarity with the ground. 

" However this may be, I can honestly bear my 
testimony to the extent of his researches and to 



Section XI. 
1856. 



"Rise of the 
Dutch Re- 
public." 

Mr. Everett. 



Mr. Pres- 
cott. 



80 



Joltn Lofhrop Motley. 



Section XI. 
1856. 



"Rise of the 
Dutch Re- 
public." 



Mr. Pres- 
cott. 



Reception of 
the work by 
the public. 



the accuracy with which he has given the resuK,,' 
of them to the public. Far from making his book 
a mere register of events, he has penetrated dec.p 
below the surface and explored the cause of these 
events. He has carefully studied the physiognomj^ 
of the times and given finished portraits of the 
great men who conducted the march of the revolu- 
tion. Every page is instinct with the love of free- 
dom and with that personal knowledge of the 
working of free institutions which could alone 
enable him to do justice to his subject. Vfe may 
congratulate ourselves that it was reserved for one 
of our countrymen to tell the story — better than 
it had yet been told — of this memorable revolu- 
tion, which in so many of its features bears a strik- 
ing resemblance to our own." 

The public welcomed the work as cordially as 
the critics. Fifteen thousand copies had already 
been sold in London in 1857. In America it was 
equally popular. Its author saw his name enrolled 
by common consent among those of the great 
writers of his time. Europe accepted him, his 
country was proud to claim him, scholarship set its 
jealously guarded seal upon the result of his labors, 
the reading world, which had not cared greatly for 
his stories, hung in delight over a narrative more 
exciting than romances; and the lonely student, 



A Memoir. 



81 



who had almost forgotten the look of living men in 
the solitude of archives haunted by dead memories, 
found himself suddenly in the full blaze of a great 
reputation. 



Section XI. 
1856. 



82 



Jolui Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XII. 
1856-1857. 



Comes to 
America. 



A winter ia 
Boston. 



XII. 

Visit to America. — Residence in Boylston Place. 

(1856-1857.) 

He visited this country in 1856, and spent the 
winter of 1856 -57 in Boston, living with his family 
in a house in Boylston Place. At this time I had 
the pleasure of meeting him often, and of seeing 
the changes which maturity, success, the opening 
of a great literary and social career, had wrought 
in his character and bearing. He was in every 
way greatly improved; the interesting, impulsive 
youth had ripened into a noble manhood. Dealing 
with great themes, his own mind had gained their 
dignity. Accustomed to the company of dead 
statesmen and heroes, his own ideas had risen to a 
higher standard. The flattery of society had added 
a new grace to his natural modesty. He was now 
a citizen of the world by his reputation ; the past 
was his province, in which he was recognized as a 
master ; the idol's pedestal was ready for him, but 
he betrayed no desire to show himself upon it. 



A Memoir. 



83 



XIII. 

Return to England. — Social Relations. — Lady Har- 
courfs Letter. {1858-1S60.) 

DUEING the years spent in Europe in writing his 
first History, from 1851 to 1856, Mr. Motley had 
lived a life of great retirement and simplicity, de- 
voting himself to his work and to the education 
of his children, to which last object he was always 
ready to give the most careful supervision. He was 
as yet unknown beyond the circle of his friends, and 
he did not seek society. In this quiet way he had 
passed the two years of residence in Dresden, the 
year divided between Brussels and the Hague, and 
a very tranquil year spent at Vevay on the Lake 
of Geneva. His health at this time was tolerably 
good, except for nervous headaches, which fre- 
quently recurred and were of great severity. His 
visit to England with his manuscript in search of 
a publisher has already been mentioned. 

In 1858 he revisited Enoland. His fame as a 

o 

successful author was there before him, and he nat- 
urally became the object of many attentions. He 
now made many acquaintances who afterwards be- 



Sect. XIII. 

1858. 



Revisits 
Enorland. 



84 



Joltn Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XIII. 

1858. 



Social life. 



Lady 

Harcourt's 
etter. 



came his kind and valued friends. Among those 
mentioned by his daughter, Lady Harcourt, are 
Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Carlisle, Lady William Eus- 
sell, Lord and Lady Palmerstou, Dean Milman, 
with many others. The following winter was 
passed in Eome, among many English and Amer- 
ican friends. 

" In the course of the next summer," his daugh- 
ter writes to me, " we all went to England, and for 
the next two years, marked chiefly by the success 
of the ' United ISTetherlands,' our social life w^as 
most agreeable and most interesting. He was in 
the fulness of his health and powers ; his works 
had made him known in intellectual society, and 
I think his presence, on the other hand, increased 
their effects. As no one knows better than you do, 
his belief in his own country and in its institutions 
at their best was so passionate and intense that it was 
a part of his nature, yet his refined and fastidious 
tastes were deeply gratified by the influences of his 
life in England, and the spontaneous kindness which 
he received added much to his happiness. At that 
time Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister; the 
weekly receptions at Cambridge House were the 
centre of all that was brilliant in the political and 
social world, while Lansdowne House, Holland 
House, and others were open to the sommites in all 



A Memoir. 



85 



branches of literature, science, rank, and politics. 
.... It was the last year of Lord Macaulay's life, 
and as a few out of many names which I recall come 
Dean Milnian, Mr. Froude (whose review of the 
Dutch Eepublic in the Westminster was one of 
the first warm recognitions it ever received), the 
Duke and Duchess of Argyll, Sir William Stirling 
Maxwell, then Mr. Stirling of Keir, the Sheri- 
dan family in its different brilliant members. Lord 
Wensleydale, and many more." 

There was no society to which Motley would not 
have added gTace and attraction by his presence, 
and to say that he was a welcome guest in the best 
houses of England is only saying that these houses 
are always open to those whose abilities, characters, 
achievements, are commended to the circles that 
have the best choice by the personal gifts which 
are nature's passport everywhere. 



Sect. XIII. 

1858. 

Social life. 



86 



JoIlu Lotlirop Motley. 



Sect. XIV. 
1859. 

Letter to 
Mr. Uuder- 
wood. 



The Atlantic 
Monthly. 



XIV. 

Letter to Mr. Francis H. Underwood. — Plan of Mr. 
Motley'' s Historical Works. — Second Great Work, 
^^ History of the United Netherlands.'''' (1859.) 

I AM enabled by the kindness of Mr. Francis H. 
Underwood to avail myself of a letter addressed to 
him by Mr. Motley in the year before the publica- 
tion of this second work, w^hich gives us an insight 
into his mode of working and the plan he proposed 
to follow. It begins with an allusion which recalls 
a literary event interesting to many of his Ameri- 
can friends. 

Rome, March 4, 1859. 
F. H. Underwood, Esq. 

My dear Sir, — .... I am delighted to hear 

of the great success of the Atlantic Monthly. In 

this remote region I have not the chance of reading 

it as often as I should like, but from the specimens 

which I have seen I am quite sure it deserves its 

wide circulation. A serial publication, the contents 

of which are purely original and of such remarkable 

merit, is a novelty in our country, and I am de- 



A Memoir. 



87 



lighted to find that it has ah^eady taken so promi- 
nent a position before the reading world 

The whole work [his history], of which the three 
volumes already published form a part, will be 
called " The Eighty Years' War for Liberty." 

Epoch I. is the Eise of the Dutch Eepublic. 

Epoch 11. Independence Achieved. From the Death 

of WiUiam the Silent tiU the Twelve 

Years' Truce. 1584-1609. 
Epoch III. Independence Eecognized. Erom the Twelve 

Years' Truce to the Peace of Westphaha. 

1609-1648. 

My subject is a very vast one, for the struggle of 
the United Provinces with Spain was one in which 
all the leading states of Europe were more or less 
involved. After the death of William the Silent, 
the history assumes world-wide proportions. Thus 
the volume which I am just about terminating .... 
is almost as much English history as Dutch. The 
Earl of Leicester, very soon after the death of 
Orange, was appointed governor of the provinces, 
and the alliance between the two countries almost 
amounted to a political union. I shall try to get 
the whole of the Leicester administration, terminat- 
ing with the grand drama of the Invincible Armada, 
into one volume ; but I doubt, my materials are so 
enormous. I have been personally very hard at 



Sect. XIV. 
1839. 



Letter to 
Mr. Under- 
wood. 



Plans for i 

great his- 
tory. 



88 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XIV. 
1859. 

Letter to 
Mr. Under- 
wood. 



Plans and 
labors. 



work, nearly two years, ransacking the British State 
Paper Office, the British Museum, and the Holland 
archives, and I have had two copyists constantly 
engaged in London, and two others at the Hague. 
Besides this, I passed the whole of last winter at 
Brussels, where, by special favor of the Belgian 
Government, I was allowed to read what no one else 
has ever been permitted to see, — the great mass 
of copies taken by that Government from the Si- 
mancas archives, a translated epitome of which has 
been published by Gachard. This correspondence 
reaches to the death of Philip II., and is of immense 
extent and importance. Had I not obtained leave 
to read the invaluable and, for my purpose, indis- 
pensable documents at Brussels, I should have gone 
to Spain, for they will not be published these 
twenty years, and then only in a translated and 
excessively abbreviated and unsatisfactory form. 
I have read the whole of this correspondence, 
and made very copious notes of it. In truth, I 
devoted three months of last winter to that pur- 
pose alone. 

The materials I have collected from the English 
archives are also extremely important and curious. 
I have hundreds of interesting letters never pub- 
lished or to be published, by Queen Elizabeth, 
Burghley, Walsingham, Sidney, Drake, Willoughby, 
Leicester, and others. For the whole of that por- 



A Memoir. 



89 



tion of my subject in which Holland and England 
were combined into one whole, to resist Spain in 
its attempt to obtain the universal empire, I have 
very abundant collections. For the history of the 
United Provinces is not at all a provincial history. 
It is the history of European liberty. Without the 
struggle of Holland and England against Spain, all 
Europe might have been Catholic and Spanish. It 
was Holland that saved England in the sixteenth 
century, and, by so doing, secured the triumph of 
the Eeformation, and placed the independence of 
the various states of Europe upon a sure foundation. 
Of course, the materials collected by me at the 
Hague are of great importance. As a single speci- 
men, I will state that I found in the archives there 
an immense and confused mass of papers, which 
turned out to be the autograph letters of Olden 
Barneveld during the last few^ years of his life ; 
during, in short, the whole of that most important 
period which preceded his execution. These letters 
are in such an intolerable handwriting that no one 
has ever attempted to read them. I could read 
them only imperfectly myself, and it would have 
taken me a very long time to have acquired the 
power to do so ; but my copyist and reader there is 
the most patient and indefatigable person alive, and 
he has quite mastered the handwriting, and he 
writes me that they are a mine of historical wealth 



Sect. XIV. 
1859. 



Letter to 
Mr. Under- 
wood. 



Materials 
for bis 
liistory. 



90 



Joliu Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XIV. 
1859. 

Letter to 
Mr. Under- 
wood. 



Plan of his 
whole work. 



for me. I shall have complete copies before I get 
to that period, one of signal interest, and which has 
never been described. I mention these matters that 
you may see that my work, whatever its other value 
may be, is built upon the only foundation fit for 
history, — original contemporary documents. These 
are all unpublished. Of course, I use the contem- 
porary historians and pamphleteers, — Dutch, Span- 
ish, French, Italian, German, and English, — but 
the most valuable of my sources are manuscript 
ones. I have said the little which I have said in 
order to vindicate the largeness of the subject. The 
kingdom of Holland is a small power now, but the 
Eighty Years' War, which secured the civil and 
religious independence of the Dutch Commonwealth 
and of Europe, was the great event of that whole 



age. 



The whole work will therefore cover a most re- 
markable epoch in human history, from the abdica- 
tion of Charles Fifth to the Peace of Westphalia, 
at which last point the political and geographical 
arrangements of Europe were established on a per- 
manent basis, — in the main undisturbed until the 
French Eevolution 

I will mention that I received yesterday a letter 
from the distinguished M. Guizot, informing me 
that the first volume of the French translation, 
edited by him, with an introduction, has just been 



A Memoir. 



91 



publislied. The publication was hastened in con- 
sequence of the appearance of a rival translation at 
Brussels. The German translation is very elegantly 
and expensively printed in handsome octavos ; and 
the Dutch translation, under the editorship of the 
archivist general of Holland, Bakhuyzen v. d. Brink, 
is enriched with copious notes and comments by 
that distinguished scholar. 

There are also three different piratical reprints 
of the original work at Amsterdam, Leipzig, and 
London. I must add that I had nothing to do with 
the translation in any case, /in fact, with the ex- 
ception of M. Guizot, no one ever obtained permis- 
sion of me to publish translations, and I never 
knew of the existence of them until I read of it in 

the journals I forgot to say that among the 

collections already thoroughly examined by me is 
that portion of the Simancas archives still retained 
in the Imperial archives of France. I spent a 
considerable time in Paris for the purpose of read- 
ing these documents. There are many letters of 
Philip 11. there, with apostilles by his own hand. 
.... I would add that I am going to pass this sum- 
mer at Venice for the purpose of reading and pro- 
curing copies from the very rich archiA^es of that 
Republic, of the correspondence of their envoys in 
Madrid, London, and Brussels during the epoch of 
which I am treating. I am also not without hope 



Sect. XIV. 
1859. 



Letter to 
Mr. Uuder- 
Wood. 



Translations 
and reprints. 



92 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XIV. 
1859. 



of cpainincj access to the archives of the Vatican 

here, although there are some difficulties in the 

way. 

With kind regards .... 

I remain very truly yours, 

J. L. MOTLEY. 



A Memoir. 



93 



XV. 

Publication of the first two Volumes of the "History of 
the United Netherlands " — Their Recej^tion, (i860.) 

We know sometliing of the manner in which 
Mr. Motley collected his materials. We know the 
labors, the difficulties, the cost of his toils among 
the dusty records of the past. What he gained by 
the years he spent in his researches is so well stated 
by himseK that I shall borrow his own words : — 

" Thanks to the liberality of many modern gov- 
ernments of Europe, the archives where the state 
secrets of the buried centuries have so long moul- 
dered are now open to the student of history. To 
him who has patience and industry, many myste- 
ries are thus revealed which no political sagacity 
or critical acumen could have divined. He leans 
over the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writ- 
ing-table, as the King spells patiently out, with 
cipher-key in hand, the most concealed hieroglyph- 
ics of Parma, or Guise, or Mendoza. He reads the 
secret thoughts of ' Fabius ' [Philip IL] as that 
cunctative Eoman scrawls his marginal apostilles 



Section XV. 
1860. 



Study in 

State 

archives. 



94 



John Lothrojj Motley. 



Section XV. 
1860. 



Revelation 
of state 
secrets. 



on each despatch ; he pries into all the stratagems 
of Camillus, Hortensins, Mucins, Julius, Tullius, 
and the rest of those ancient heroes who lent their 
names to the diplomatic masqueraders of the six- 
teenth century ; he enters the cabinet of the deeply 
pondering Burghley, and takes from the most pri- 
vate drawer the memoranda which record that min- 
ister's unutterable doubtings ; he pulls from the 
dressing-gown folds of the stealthy, soft-gliding 
Walsingham the last secret which he has picked 
from the Emperor's pigeon-holes or the Pope's 
pocket, and which not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor 
Leicester, nor tlie Lord Treasurer is to see ; nobody 
but Elizabeth herself; he sits invisible at the most 
secret councils of the Nassaus and Barneveldt and 
Buys, or pores with Farnese over coming victories 
and vast schemes of universal conquest ; he reads 
the latest bit of scandal, the minutest characteristic 
of king or minister, chronicled by the gossiping 
Venetians for the edification of the Forty ; and after 
all this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the 
cross-purposes, the bribings, the windings in the 
dark, he is not surprised if those who Avere syste- 
matically deceived did not always arrive at correct 
conclusions." {Hist, of United Netherlands, I. p. 54.) 

The fascination of such a quest is readily conceiv- 
able. A drama with real characters, and the spec- 



A Memoir. 



95 



tator at liberty to go behind the scenes and look 
■upon and talk with the kings and queens between 
the acts ; to examine the scenery, to handle the 
properties, to study the " make up " of the imposing 
personages of full-dress histories ; to deal with them 
all as Thackeray has done with the Grand Monarque 
in one of his caustic sketches, — this would be as 
exciting, one might suppose, as to sit through a 
play one knows by heart at Drury Lane or the The- 
atre Fran^ais, and might furnish occupation enough 
to the curious idler who was only in search of enter- 
tainment. The mechanical obstacles of half-illegi- 
ble manuscript, of antiquated forms of speech, to 
say nothing of the intentional obscurities of diplo- 
matic correspondence, stand, however, in the way of 
all but the resolute and unwearied scholar. These 
difficulties, in all their complex obstinacy, had 
been met and overcome by the heroic efforts, the 
concentrated devotion, of the new laborer in the 
unbroken fields of secret history. 

Without stopping to take breath, as it were, — 
for his was a task dc longue haleine, — he proceeded 
to his second OTeat undertaking^. 

The first portion — consisting of two volumes — 
of the History of the United Netherlands was 
published in the year 1860. It maintained and 
increased the reputation he had already gained by 
his first history. 



Section XV. 
1860. 



Second his- 
torical work, 
History of 
the United 
Netherlands. 



96 



John Lothrop Motley, 



Section X'V. 
1860. 



History of 
the Uuited 
Netherlands. 



The Quar- 
terly Review 



The London Quarterly Eeview devoted a long 
article to it, beginning with this handsome tribute 
to his earlier and later volumes : — 

" Mr. Motley's ' History of the Eise of the Dutch 
Eepublic ' is already known and valued for the 
grasp of mind which it displays, for the earnest 
and manly spirit in which he has communicated 
the results of deep research and careful reflection. 
Again he appears before us, rich with the spoils of 
time, to tell the story of the United Netherlands 
from the time of William the Silent to the end of 
the eventful year of the Spanish Armada, and we 
still find him in every way worthy of this ' great 
argument' Indeed, it seems to us that he proceeds 
with an increased facility of style, and with a more 
complete and easy command over his materials. 
These materials are indeed splendid, and of them 
most excellent use has been made. The English 
State Paper Office, the Spanish archives from Si- 
mancas, and the Dutch and Belgian repositories, 
have all yielded up their secrets ; and Mr. Motley 
has enjoyed the advantage of dealing with a vast 
mass of unpublished documents, of which he has 
not failed to avail himself to an extent which 
places his work in the foremost rank as an authority 
for the period to which it relates. By means of 
his labor and his art we can sit at the council 



A Memoir. 



97 



board of Philip and Elizabeth, we can read their 
most private despatches. Guided by his demon- 
stration, we are enabled to dissect out to their ulti- 
mate issues the minutest ramifications of intrigue. 
We join in the amusement of the popular lampoon; 
we visit the prison-house ; we stand by the scaf- 
fold ; we are present at the battle and the siege. 
We can scan the inmost characters of men and can 
view them in their habits as they lived." 

After a few criticisms upon lesser points of form 
and style, the writer says : — 

" But the work itself must be read to appreciate 
the vast and conscientious industry bestowed upon 
it. His delineations are true and life-like, because 
they are not mere compositions written to please 
the ear, but are really taken from the facts and 
traits preserved in those authentic records to which 
he has devoted the labor of many years. Diligent 
and painstaking as the humblest chronicler, he has 
availed himself of many sources of information 
which have not been made use of by any previous 
historical writer. At the same time he is not 
oppressed by his materials, but has sagacity to 
estimate their real value, and he has combined 
with scholarly power the facts which they contain. 
He has rescued the story of the Netherlands from 
the domain of vague and general narrative, and has 
labored, with much judgment and ability, to unfold 



Section XV. 
1860. 

History of 
the United 
Netherlands. 



The London 

Quarterly 

Review. 



98 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section XV. 
1860. 

History of 
the United 
;Netlierlau(ls. 



The Edin- 
bui'gli Re- 
view. 



the Belli ccmsas, et vitia, et moclos, and to assign to 
every man and every event their own share in the 
contest, and their own influence upon its fortunes. 
We do not w^onder that his earlier publication has 
been received as a valuable addition, not only to 
English, but to European literature." One or two 
other contemporary criticisms may help us with their 
side lights. A critic in the Edinburgh Eeview 
for January, 1861, thinks that " Mr. Motley has 
not always been successful in keeping the graphic 
variety of his details subordinate to the main 
theme of his work." Still, he excuses the fault, 
as he accounts it, in consideration of the new 
light thrown on various obscure points of his- 
tory, and " it is atoned for by striking merits, 
by many narratives of great events faithfully, 
powerfully, and vividly executed, by the clearest 
and most life-like conceptions of character, and 
by a style which, if it sacrifices the severer prin- 
ciples of composition to a desire to be striking 
and picturesque, is always vigorous, full of anima- 
tion, and glowing with the genuine enthusiasm of 
the waiter. Mr. Motley combines as an historian 
two qualifications seldom found united, — to great 
capacity for historical research he adds much power 
of pictorial representation. In his pages we find 
characters and scenes minutely set forth in elabo- 
rate and characteristic detail, which is relieved and 



A Memoir. 



99 



heightened in effect by the artistic breadth of light 
and shade thrown across the broader prospects of 
history. In an American author, too, we must 
commend the hearty English spirit in which the 
book is written ; and fertile as the present age has 
been in historical works of the highest merit, 
none of them can be ranked above these volumes 
in the grand qualities of interest, accuracy, and 
truth." 

A writer in Blackwood (May, 1861) contrasts 
Motley with Froude somewhat in the way in 
which another critic had contrasted him with 
Prescott. Froude, he says, remembers that there 
are some golden threads in the black robe of the 
Dominican. Motley " finds it black and thrusts it 
farther into the darkness." 

Every writer carries more or less of his own 
character into his book, of course. A great pro- 
fessor has told me that there is a personal flavor 
in the mathematical work of a man of genius like 
Poisson. Those who have known Motley and 
Prescott would feel sure beforehand that the im- 
pulsive nature of the one and the judicial serenity 
of the other would as surely betray themselves in 
their writings as in their conversation and in their 
every movement. Another point which the critic 
of Blackwood's Magazine has noticed has not been 



Section XV. 
1860. 



History of 
the United 
Netlierlanda. 



Blackwood'g 
Magazine. 



A writer's 
character 
seen in his 
books. 



L.of : 



100 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Section XV. 
1860. 

History of 
the United 
Netherlands. 



^Traces of his 
earlier style. 



SO generally observed : it is what he calls " a dash- 
ing, offhand, rattling " style, — ''fast " writing. It 
cannot be denied that here and there may be de- 
tected slight vestiges of the way of writing of an 
earlier period of Motley's literary life, with which 
I have no reason to think the writer just men- 
tioned was acquainted. Now and then I can trace 
in the turn of a phrase, in the twinkle of an epi- 
thet, a faint reminiscence of a certain satirical lev- 
ity, airiness, jauntiness, if I may hint such a word, 
which is just enough to remind me of those per- 
ilous shallows of his early time through which 
his richly freighted argosy had passed with such 
wonderful escape from their dangers and such very 
slight marks of injury. That which is pleasant 
gayety in conversation may be quite out of place in 
formal composition, and Motley's wit must have 
had a hard time of it struggling to show its span- 
gles in the processions while his gorgeous tragedies 
went sweeping by. 



A Memoir. 



101 



XVI. 

Residence in England. — Oufhreak of the Civil War. 
— Letter to the London Times. — Visit to Amer- 
ica. — Appointed Minister to Austria. — Lady 
Harcourfs Letter. — Miss Motleifs Meinorandunfi. 
(1860-1866.) 

The winter of 1859-60 was passed chiefly at 
Oatlands Hotel, Walton-on-Thames. In 1860 Mr. 
Motley hired the house ISTo. 31 Hertford Street, 
May Fair, London. He had just published the 
first two volumes of his History of the Nether- 
lands, and w^as ready for the further labors of its 
continuation, when the threats, followed by the 
outbreak, of the great civil contention in his native 
land brought him back from the struggles of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the conflict 
of the nineteenth. 

His love of country, which had grown upon him 
so remarkably of late years, would not suffer him 
to be silent at such a moment. All around him he 
found ignorance and prejudice. Tho quarrel was 
like to be prejudged in default of a champion of 



Sect. XVI. 
1860. 



The civil 
war ill 
America. 



102 



John Lothrop Motley, 



Sect. XVI. 
1861. 

Letters to 
Tlie London 
Times. 



Retura to 
America. 



Appointed 
Minister to 
Austria. 



the cause which to him was that of Liberty and 
Justice. He wrote two long letters to the London 
Times, in which he attempted to make clear to 
Englishmen and to Europe the nature and condi- 
tions of our complex system of government, the 
real cause of the strife, and the mighty issues at 
stake. Nothing could have been more timely, 
nothing nore needed. Mr. "William Everett, who 
was then in England, bears strong testimony to the 
effect these letters produced. Had Mr. Motley done 
no other service to his country, this alone would 
entitle him to honorable remembrance as among the 
first defenders of the flag which at that moment 
had more to fear from what was going on in the 
cabinet councils of Europe than from all the armed 
hosts that were gathering against it. 

He returned to America in 1861 and soon after- 
wards was appointed by Mr. Lincoln Minister to 
Austria. Mr. Burlingame had been previously 
appointed to the office, but having been objected to 
by the Austrian Government for political reasons, 
the place unexpectedly left vacant was conferred 
upon Motley, who had no expectation of any diplo- 
matic appointment when he left Europe. Eor 
some interesting particulars relating to his resi- 
dence in Vienna I must refer to the communi- 
cations addressed to me by his daughter, Lady 
Harcourt, and her youngest sister, and the letters 



A Memoir. 



103 



I received from him while at the Austrian capital. 
Lady Harcourt writes : — 

" He held the post for six years, seeing the civil 
war fought out and brought to a triumphant con- 
clusion, and enjoying, as I have every reason to 
believe, the full confidence and esteem of Mr. Lin- 
coln to the last hour of the President's life. In the 
first dark years the painful interest of the great 
national drama was so all-absorbing that literary 
work was entirely put aside, and with his country- 
men at home he lived only in the varying fortunes 
of the day, his profound faith and enthusiasm sus- 
taining him and lifting him above the natural in- 
fluence of a by no means sanguine temperament. 
Later, when the tide was turning and success was 
nearing, he was more able to work. His social 
relations during the whole period of his mission 
were of the most agreeable character. (The society 
of Vienna was at that time, and I believe is still, 
the absolute reverse of that of England, where all 
claims to distinction are recognized and welcomed. 
There the old feudal traditions were still in full 
force, and diplomatic representatives admitted to 
the court society by right of official position found^ 
it to consist exclusively of an aristocracy of birth^ 
sixteen quarterings of nobility being necessary to a 
right of presentation to the Emperor and Empress. 
The society thus constituted was distinguished by 



Sect. XVI. 
1860-1866. 



Lady II ar- 
court's let- 
ter. 



Society of 
Vienna. 



104 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVI. 
1860-1866. 



Society of 
Vienna. 



great cliarm and grace of manner, the exclusion of 
all outer elements not only limiting the numbers, 
but giving the ease of a family party within the 
charmed circle. On the other hand, larger interests 
suffered under the rigid exclusion of all occupations 
except the army, diplomacy, and court place. The 
intimacy among the different members of the soci- 
ety was so close that, beyond a courtesy of manner 
that never failed, the tendency was to resist the 
approach of any stranger as a gene. A single new 
face was instantly remarked and commented on in 
a Vienna saloon to an extent unknown in any other 
large capital. This peculiarity, however, worked 
in favor of the old resident. Kindliness of feeling 
increased with familiarity and grew into something 
better than acquaintance, and the parting with 
most sincere and affectionately disposed friends 
in the end was deeply felt on both sides. Those 
years were passed in a pleasant house in the 
Weiden Faubourg, with a large garden at the back, 
and I do not think that during this time there was 
one disasjreeable incident in his relations to his 
colleagues, while in several cases the relations, 
agreeable with all, became those of close friendship. 
We lived constantly, of course, in diplomatic and 
Austrian society, and during the latter part of the 
time particularly his house was as much frequented 
and the centre of as many dancing and other recep- 



A Memoir. 



105 



tions as any in tlie place. ( His official relations 
with the Foreign Office were courteous and agree- 
able, the successive Foreign Ministers during his 
stay being Count Eichberg, Count Mensdorff', and 
Baron Beust. Austria was so far removed from 
any real contact with our own country that, though 
the interest in our war may have been languid, 
they did not pretend to a knowledge which might 
have inclined them to controversy, while an in- 
stinct that ^v-e were acting as a constituted gov- 
ernment against rebellion rather inclined them to 
sympathy. \ I think I may say that as he became 
known among them his keen patriotism and high 
sense of honor and truth were fully understood and 
appreciated, and that what he said always com- 
manded a sympathetic hearing among men with 
totally different political ideas, but with chivalrous 
and loyal instincts to comprehend his own. I shall 
never forget his account of the terrible day when 
the news of Mr. Lincoln's death came. By some 
accident a rumor of it reached him first throuGjh a 
colleague. He went straight to the Foreign Office 
for news,^oping against hope, was received by 
Count Mensdorff, who merely came forward and 
laid his arm about Jiis--shoulder with an intense 
sympathy beyond words." 

Miss Motley, the historian's youngest daughter 
has added a note to her sister's communication : 



Sect. XVI. 
1860 - 1866. 



Residence at 
Vicuna. 



Official 
relations. 



106 



Jolm Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVI. 
1860-1866. 



Miss Mot- 
ley's note. 



Troops for 

Mexico 

detained. 



Visits from 
Bismarck. 



" During his residence in Vienna the most im- 
portant negotiations which he had to carry on with 
the Austrian Government were those connected 
with the Mexican affair. Maximilian at one time 
applied to his brother the Emperor for assistance, 
and he promised to accede to his demand. Accord- 
ingly a large number of volunteers were equipped 
and had actually embarked at Trieste, when a de- 
spatch from Seward arrived, instructing the Amer- 
ican Minister to give notice to the Austrian Gov- 
ernment that if the troops sailed for Mexico he 
was to leave Vienna at once. My father had 
to go at once to Count Mensdorff with these in- 
structions, and in spite of the Foreign Minister 
being annoyed that the United States Government 
had not sooner intimated that this extreme course 
would be taken, the interview was quite amicable 
and the troops were not allowed to sail. We 
were in Vienna during the war in which Den- 
mark fouo'ht alone a^^jainst Austria and Prussia, 
and when it was over Bismarck came to Vienna 
to settle the terms of peace with the Emperor. 
He dined with us twice during his short stay and 
was most delightful and agreeable. When he and 
my father were together they seemed to live over 
the youthful days they had spent together as 
students, and many were the anecdotes of their 
boyish frolics which Bismarck related." 



A Memoir. 



107 



XVII. 

Letters from Vienna. {1861-1863.) 

Soon after Mr. Motley's arrival in Vienna I re- 
ceived a long letter from him, most of whicti relates 
to personal matters, but which contains a few sen- 
tences of interest to the general reader as showing 
his zealous labors, wherever he found himself, in 
behalf of the great cause then in bloody debate 
in his own country : — 

" jSTovember 14, 1861. 
". . . . What can I say to you of cis-Atlantic 
things ? I am almost ashamed to be away from home. 
You know that I had decided to remain, and had sent 
for my family to come to America, when my present 
appointment altered my plans. I do what good I 
can. I think I made some impression on Lord 
John Eussell, with whom I spent two days soon 
after my amval in England, and I talked very 
frankly and as strongly as I could to Palmerston, 
and I have had long conversations and correspond- 
ences with other leading men in Eno^land. I have 
also had an hour's [conversation] with Thouvenel 



Sect. XVn. 
1861-1863. 



Letter from 
Vienna. 



108 



Jolui Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVII. 
1861. 

Letter from 
Vienna. 



in Paris. I hammered the Northern view into 
him as soundly as I could. For this year there 
will be no foreign interference with us. I don't 
anticipate it at any time, unless we bring it on 
ourselves by bad management, which I don't ex- 
pect. Our fate is in our own hands, and Europe 
is looking on to see which side is strongest, — 
when it has made the discovery it will back it as 
also the best and the most moral. Yesterday I 
had my audience with the Emperot. He received 
me with much cordiality, and seemed interested 
in a long account which I gave him of our affairs. 
You may suppose I inculcated the Northern views. 
We spoke in his vernacular, and he asked me 
afterwards if I was a German. I mention this 
not from vanity, but because he asked it with 
earnestness, and as if it had a political signifi- 
cance. Of course I undeceived him. His ap- 
pearance interested me, and his manner is very 
pleasing." 

I continued to receive long and interesting letters 
from him at intervals during his residence as Min- 
ister at Vienna. Eelating as they often did to 
public matters, about which he had private sources 
of information, his anxiety that they should not get 
into print was perfectly natural. As, however, I 
was at liberty to read his letters to others at my 



A Memoir. 



109 



discretion, andr as many parts of these letters have 
an interest as showing how American affaj.rs looked 
to one who was behind the scenes in Europe, I may 
venture to give some extracts without fear of vio- 
lating the spirit of his injunctions, or of giving 
offence to individuals. The time may come when 
his extended correspondence can be printed in full 
with propriety, but it must be in a future year and 
after it has passed into the hands of a younger 
generation. Meanwhile, these few glimpses at his 
life and records of his feelings and opinions will 
help to make the portrait of the man we are study- 
ing present itself somewhat more clearly. 

*' Legation of the U. S. A., Vienna, January 14, 1862. 

" My dear Holmes, — I have two letters of yours, 
November 29 and December 17, to express my 
thanks for. It is quite true that it is difiicult for me 
to write with the same feeling that inspires you, — 
that everything around the inkstand within a radius 
of a thousand miles is full of deepest interest to 
writer and reader. I don't even intend to try to 
amuse you with Vienna matters. What is it to you 
that we had a very pleasant dinner-party last week 
at Prince Esterhazy's, and another this week at 
Prince Liechtenstein's, and that to-morrow 1 am 
to put on my cocked hat and laced coat to make a 
visit to her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Mother, 



Sect. XVII. 
1862. 



Letter from 
Vienna. 



110 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVII. 
1863. 



The Trent 
affair. 



and that to-night there is to be the first of the 
assembly balls, the Vienna Almack's, at which — I 
shall be allowed to absent myself altogether ? 

" It strikes me that there is likely to be left a 
fair field for us a few months longer, say till mid- 
summer. The Trent affair I shall not say much 
about, except to state that I have always been for 
giving up the prisoners. I was awfully afraid, 
knowing that the demand had gone forth, — 



' Send us your prisoners or you '11 hear of it,' 

that the answer would have come back in the Hot- 
spur vein — 

* And if the Devil come and roar for them, 
We will not send them.' 

The result would have been most disastrous, for in 
order to secure a most trifling advantage, — that of 
keeping Mason and Slidell at Fort Warren a little 
lousier, — we should have turned our backs on all 
the principles maintained by us when neutral, and 
should have been obliged to accept a war at an 

enormous disadvantage 

" But I hardly dared to hope that we should have 
obtained such a victory as we have done. To have 
disavowed the illegal transaction at once, — before 
any demand came from England, — to have placed 
that disavowal on the broad ground of principle 



A Memoir. 



Ill 



which we have always cherished, and thus with a 
clear conscience, and to our entire honor, to have 
kept ourselves clear from a war which must have 
given the Confederacy the invincible alliance of 
England, — was exactly what our enemies in Eu- 
rope did not suppose us capable of doing. But 
we have done it in the handsomest manner, and 
there is not one liberal heart in this hemisphere 
that is not rejoiced, nor one hater of us and of 
our institutions that is not gnashing his teeth with 
rage." 

The letter of ten close pages from which I have 
quoted these passages is full of confidential infor- 
mation, and contains extracts from letters of leading 
statesmen. If its date had been 1762, I mic^ht feel 
authorized in disobeying its injunctions of privacy. 
I must quote one other sentence, as it shows his 
animus at that time towards a disting^uished states- 
man of whom he was afterwards accused of speak- 
ing in very hard terms by >n obscure writer whose 
intent was to harm him. , In speaking of the Trent 
affair, Mr. Motley says : ^^^^^e English premier has 
been foiled by our much maligned Secretary of State, 
of whom, on this occasion at least, one has the right 
to say, with Sir Henry Wotton, — -. 

His armor was his honest thought \ 
And simple truth his utmost skill."/ 



Sect. XVII. 
1862. 



Mr. Seward, 



112 



Jolui Lotlirop Motley. 



Sect. XVII. 
1863. 

He tliinks of 
nothing but 
American 
affairs. 



Letter from 
Vienna. 



He says at the close of this long letter : " I wish 
I could bore you about something else but Ameri- 
can politics. But there is nothing else ivorth think- 
ing of in the world. All else is leather and pru- 
nella. We are living over again the days of the 
Dutchmen or the seventeenth-century Englishmen." 

My next letter, of fourteen closely written pages, 
was of similar character to the last. Motley could 
think of nothing but the great conflict. He w^as 
alive to every report from America, listening too 
with passionate fears or hopes, as the case might be, 
to the whispers not yet audible to the world which 
passed from lip to lip of the statesmen who were 
watching the course of events from the other side 
of the Atlantic with the sweet complacency of the 
looker-on of Lucretius ; too often rejoicing in the 
storm that threatened wreck to institutions and an 
organization which they felt to be a standing menace 
to the established order of things in their older com- 
munities. 

A few extracts from this very long letter will be 
found to have a special interest from the time at 
which they were written. 

"Legation of U. S. A., Vienna, February 26, 1862. 

" My dear Holmes, — .... I take great pleasure 
in reading your prophecies, and intend to be just as 
free in hazarding my own, for, as you say, our mor- 



A Memoir. 



11 



o 



tal life is but a string of guesses at the future, and 
no one but an idiot would be discourao-ed at finding 
himself sometimes far out in his calculations. If I 
find you signally right in any of your predictions, be 
sure that I will congratulate and applaud. If you 
piake mistakes, you shall never hear of them again, 
and I promise to forget them. Let me ask the same 
indulgence from you in return. This is what makes 
letter-writing a comfort and journalizing dangerous. 
.... The ides of March will be upon us before 
this letter reaches you. We have got to squash 
the rebellion soon or be squashed forever as a na- 
tion. I don't pretend to judge military plans or the 
capacities of generals. But, as you suggest, perhaps 
I can take a more just view of the whole picture of 
the eventful struggle at this great distance than do 
those absolutely acting and suffering on the scene. 
Nor can I resist the desire to prophesy any more 
than you can do, knowing that I may prove utterly 
mistaken. I say, then, that one great danger comes 
from the chance of foreign interference. What will 
prevent that ? 

" Our utterly defeating the Confederates in some 
(jvmt and conclusive battle ; or, 

" Our possession of the cotton-ports and opening 
them to European trade ; or, 

" A most itneqitivocal policy of slave emancipation. 

" Any one of these three conditions would stave off ^ 



Sect. XVll. 
1862. 



Letter f run 
Vienna. 



The rebel- 
lion. 



His prophe- 
cies. 



114 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVII. 
1862. 

Letter from 
Vienua. 



Slave eman- 
cipation the 
most impor- 
tant measure. 



recognition by foreign powers, until we had our- 
selves abandoned the attempt to reduce the South 
to obedience. 

" The last measure is to my mind the most im- 
portant. The South has, by going to war with the 
United States Government, tlirust into out hands 
against our ivill the invincible weapon which con- 
stitutional reasons had hitherto forbidden us to 
employ. At the same time it has given us the 
power to remedy a great wrong to four millions of 
the human race, in which we had hitherto been 
obliged to acquiesce. We are threatened with na- 
tional annihilation, and defied to use the only means 
of national preservation. 

"The question is distinctly proposed to us. Shall 
slavery die, or the great Eepublic ? It is most 
astounding to me that there can be two opinions in 
the free States as to the answer. 

" If we do fall, we deserve our fate. At the be- 
ginning of the contest, constitutional scruples might 
be respectable. But now we are fighting to subju- 
gate the South ; that is, Slavery. We are fighting 
for nothing else that I know of. We are fighting 
for the Union. Who wishes to destroy the Union ? 
The slaveholder, nobody else. Are we to spend 
twelve hundred millions, and raise six hundred 
thousand soldiers, in order to 'protect slavery ? It 
really does seem to me too simple for argument. I 



A Memoir. 



115 



am anxiously waiting for the coming Columbus 
who will set this egg of ours on end by smashing 
in the slavery end. We shall be rolling about in 
every direction until tliat is done. I don't know 
that it is to be done by proclamation. Eather per- 
haps by facts Well, I console myself with 

thinking that the people — the American people, 
at least — is about as wise collectively as less nu- 
merous collections of individuals, and that the peo- 
ple has really declared emancipation, and is only 
puzzling how to carry it into effect. After all, it 
seems to be a law of Providence, that progress 
should be by a spiral movement ; so that when it 
seems most tortuous, we may perhaps be going ahead. 
I am firm in the faith that slavery is now wriggling 
itself to death. With slavery in its pristine vigor, 
I should think the restored Union neither possible 
nor desirable. Don't understand me as not takins^ 
into account all the strateoical considerations aoainst 
premature governmental utterances on this great 
subject. But are there any trustworthy friends to 
the Union among the slaveholders ? Should we 
lose many Kentuckians and Virginians who are 
now with us, if we boldly confiscated the slaves of 
all rebels ? — and a confiscation of property which 
has legs and so confiscates itself, at command, is not 
only a legal, but would prove a very practical 
measure in time of war. In brief, the time is fast 



Sect. XVII. 
1863. 



Letter from 
Vienna. 



Slaveiy 
about to 
perish. 



116 



Jolm Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVII. 

1862. 

Letter from 
Vienna. 



Lowell's 
Yankee Idyl. 



approaching, I think, when ' Thorough ' should be 
written on all our banners. Slavery will never ac- 
cept a subordinate position. The great Eepublic 
and Slavery cannot both survive. We have been 
defied to mortal combat, and yet we hesitate to strike. 
These are my poor thoughts on this great subject. 
Perhaps you will think them crude. I was much 
struck with what you quote from Mr. Conway, that 
if emancipation was proclaimed on the Upper Mis- 
sissippi it would be known to the negroes of Louis- 
iana in advance of the telegraph. And if once the 
blacks had leave to run, how many whites would 
have to stay at home to guard their dissolving 
property ? 

" You have had enough of my maunderings. But 
before I conclude them, may I ask you to give all 
our kindest regards to Lowell, and to express our 
admiration for the Yankee Idyl. I am afraid of 
using too extravagant language if I say all I think 
about it. Was there ever anything more stinging, 
more concentrated, more vigorous, more just ? He 
has condensed into those few pages the essence of 
a hundred diplomatic papers and historical disqui- 
sitions and Fourth of July orations. I was dining 
a day or two since with his friend Lytton (Bulwer's 
son, attache here) and Julian Fane (Secretary of 
the embassy), both great admirers of him, — and 
especially of the Biglow Papers, — they begged me 



A Memoir. 



117 



to send them the Mason and Slidell Idyl, but 
I would n't, — I don't think it is in English na- 
ture (although theirs is very cosmopolitan and 
liberal) to take such punishment and come up 
smiling. I would rather they got it in some 
other way, and then told me what they thought 
voluntarily. 

" I have very pleasant relations with all the J. B.'s 
here. They are all friendly and well disposed to 
the North, — I speak of the embassy, which, with 

the ambassador and dress numbers eight or ten 

souls, — some of them very intellectual ones. There 
are no other J. B.'s here. 1 have no fear at present 
of foreign interference. We have got three or four 
months to do our work in, — a fair field and no 
favor. There is no question whatever that the 
Southern Commissioners have been thoroughly 
snubbed in London and Paris. There is to be a 
blockade debate in Parliament next week, but no 
bad consequences are to be apprehended. The 
Duke de Gramont (French Ambassador, and an in- 
timate friend of the Emperor) told my wife last 
night that it was entirely false that the Emperor 
had ever urged the English government to break 
the blockade. ' Don't believe it, — don't believe a 
word of it,' he said. He has ahuays held that lan- 
guage to me. He added that Prince Napoleon had 
just come out with a strong speech about us, — you 



Sect. XVII. 
1863. 



Letter from 
Vienna. 



What Napo- 
leon did not 
do. 



118 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVII. 
1863. 

Letter from 
Vienna. 



The Arch- 
duke Maxi- 
milian. 



His charac- 
ter. 



His travels. 



will see it, doubtless, before you get this letter, — 
but it has not yet reached us. 

" Shall I say anything of Austria, — what can I 
say^that would interest you ? That 's the reason 
why I hate to write. All my thoughts are in 
America. Do you care to know about the Arch- 
duke Ferdinand Maximilian, that shall be King 
hereafter of Mexico (if L. l!^. has his way) ? He is 
next brother to the Emperor, but although I have 
had the honor of private audiences of many arch- 
dukes here, this one is a resident of Trieste.' 

" He is about thirty, — has an adventurous dispo- 
sition, — some imagination, — a turn for poetry, — 
has voyaged a good deal about the world in the 
Austrian ship-of-Avar, — for in one respect he much 
resembles that unfortunate but anonymous ancestor 
of his, the King of Bohemia with the seven castles, 
who, according to Corporal Trim, had such a passion 
for navigation and sea-affairs, ' with never a seaport 
in all his dominions.' But now the present King of 
Bohemia has got the sway of Trieste, and is Lord 
High Admiral and Chief of the Marine Depart- 
ment. He has been much in Spain, also in South 
America, — I have read some travels, Eeise Skizzen, 
of his — printed, not published. They are not with- 
out talent, and he ever and anon relieves his prose 
jog-trot by breaking into a canter of poetry. He 
adores bull-fights, and rather regrets the Inquisi- 



A Memoir. 



119 



tion, and considers the Duke of Alva everything 
noble and chivalrous, and the most abused of men. 
It would do your heart good to hear his invocations 
to that deeply injured shade, and his denunciations 
of the ignorant and vulgar protestants who have 
defamed him. (N. B. Let me observe that the E. 
of the D. E. was not published until long after the 
Eeise Skizzen were written.) Du armer Alva .' 
well du dem Willen deines Herrn unerschtitterlich 
treu wast, well die festbestimmten grundsatze der 
Eegierung, etc., etc., etc. You can imagine the 
rest. 

/'' " Dear me I I wish I could get back to the six- 
teenth and seventeenth century But alas ! 

the events of the nineteenth are too engrossing. 

" If Lowell cares to read this letter, will you allow 
me to 'make it over to him jointly,' as Captain 
Cuttle says. I wished to write to him, but I am 
afraid only you would tolerate my writing so much 
when I have nothing to say. If he would ever send 
me a line I should be infinitely obliged, and would 
quickly respond. We read the 'Washers of the 
Shroud ' with fervid admiration. 

"Always remember me most sincerely to the Club, 
one and all. It touches me nearly when you assure 
me that I am not forgotten by them. To-morrow 
is Saturday and the last of the montK* We are 

* See Appendix A, 



Sect. XVII. 
1862. 

Letter from 
Vienna. , 



The Satur- 
day Club. 



120 



Jolm Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVII. 
1863. 



Another let- 
ter from 
Vienna. 



He has no 
doubt as to 
the result of 
the war. 



o-oing to dine with our Spanish colleague. But 
the first bumper of the Don's champagne I shall 
drain to the health of my Parker House friends." 

From another long letter dated August 31, 1862, 
I extract the following passages : — 

" I quite agree in all that you said in your last 
letter. ' The imp of secession can't re-enter its 
mother's womb.' It is merely childish to talk of 
the Union ' as it was.' You might as well bring 
back the Saxon Heptarchy. But the Great Ee- 
public is destined to live and flourish, I can't doubt. 
. . . . Do you remember that wonderful scene in 
Faust in which Mephistopheles draws wine for the 
rabble with a gimlet out of the wooden table ; and 
how it changes to fire as they drink it, and how 
they all go mad, draw their knives, grasp each other 
by the nose, and think they are cutting off bunches 
of grapes at every blow, and how foolish they all 
look when they awake from the spell and see how 
the Devil has been mocking them ? It always 
seems to me a parable of the great Secession. 

" I repeat, I can't doubt as to the ultimate result. 
But I dare say we have all been much mistaken in 
our calculations as to time. Days, months, years, 
are nothing in history. Men die, iinan is immortal, 
practically, even on this earth. We are so impa- 
tient, — and we are always watching for the last 
scene of the tragedy. Now I humbly opine that the 



A Memoir, 



121 



drop is only about falling on the first act, or per- 
haps only the prologue. This act or prologue will 
be called, in after days. War for the status quo. 

" Such enthusiasm, heroism, and manslaughter as 
status quo could inspire, has, I trust, been not en- 
tirely in vain, but it has been proved insufficient. 

/" I firmly believe that when the slaveholders de- 
clared war on the United States Government they 
began a series of events that, in the logical chain of 
history, cannot come to a c0hclusion until the last 
vestige of slavery is gone/ Looking at the whole 
field for a moment dispassionately, ohjectively, as 
the dear Teutonic philosophers say, and merely as 
an exhibition of phenomena, I cannot imagine any 
other issue. Everything else may happen. This 
alo]je must happen. 

/" But after all this is n't a war. It is a revolu- 
tion. It is n't strategists that are wanted so much 
as hblievers. In revolutions the men who win are 
those who are in earnest. Jeff and Stonewall and 
the other Devil- worshippers are in earnest, but it 
was not written in the book of fate that the slave- 
holders' rebellion should be vanquished by a pro- 
slavery general. History is never so illogical. No, 
the coming 'man on horseback ' on our side must 
be a great strategist, with the soul of that insane 
lion, mad old John Brown, in his bellv. That is 
your only Promethean recij)e : — 



Sect. XVII. 

1862. 
i 

Letter from 
Vienna. 



The struggle 
Hdt a war, 
but a revo- 
Intiou. 



122 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVII. 

1862. 



Another 
letter from 
Vienna. 



Refers to the 
death of 
Wilder 
Dwight. 



' et insani leonis 
Vim stomacho apposuisse nostro.' 

" I don't know wliy Horace runs so in my head 
this morning 

" There will be work enough for all — but I feel 
awfully fidgety just now about Port Eoyal and 
Hilton Head, and about affairs generally for the 
next three months. After that iron-clads and the 
new levies must make us invincible." 

In another letter, dated November 2, 1862, he 
expresses himself very warmly about his disap- 
pointment in the attitude of many of his old Eng- 
lish friends with reference to our civil conflict. 
He had recently heard the details of the death of 
" the noble Wilder Dwight." 

" It is unnecessary," he says, " to say how deeply 
we were moved. I had the pleasure of knowing 
him well, and I always appreciated his energy, his 
manliness, and his inteUigeut cheerful heroism. I 
look back upon him now as a kind of heroic type 
of what a young New-Englander ought to be and 
was. I tell you that one of these days — after a 
generation of mankind has passed away — these 
youths will take their places in our history and be 
regarded by the young men and women now unborn 
with the admiration which the Philip Sidneys and 
the Max Piccolominis now inspire. After all, 
what was your Chevy Chace to stir blood with like 



A Memoir. 



123 



a trumpet ? What noble principle, what deathless 
interest, was there at stake ? Nothing but a bloody 
fight between a lot of noble gamekeepers on one 
side and of noble poachers on the other. And be- 
cause they fought well and hacked each other to 
pieces like devils, they have been heroes for cen- 
turies." 

The letter was written in a very excited state of 
feeling, and runs over with passionate love of coun- 
try end indignation at the want of sympathy with 
the cause of freedom which he had found in quar- 
ters where he had not expected such coldness or 
hostile tendencies. 

From a letter dated Vienna, September 22, 1863. 

" . . . . When you wrote me last you said on gen- 
eral matters this : ' In a few days we shall get the 
news of the success or failure of the attacks on 
Port Hudson and Vicksburg. If both are success- 
ful, many will say that the whole matter is about 
settled.' You may suppose that when 1 got the 
great news 1 shook hands warmly with you in the 
spirit across the Atlantic. Day by day for so long 
we had been hoping to hear the fall of Vicksburg. 
At last when that little concentrated telegram came 
announcing Vicksburg and Gettysburg on the same 
day and in two lines, 1 found myself almost alone. 
.... There was nobody in the house to join in my 
huzzahs but my youngest infant. And my con- 



Sect. XVII. 
1863. 

Letter from 
Vienna. 



Vioksburp: 
and Gettys- 
burg. 



124 



John LotliTop Motley. 



Sect. XVII. 
1863. 

Letter from 
Vienna. 



He has never 
faltered in 
his faith. 



Jironsrht in 
in Austria. 



duct very much resembled that of the excellent 
Philip II. when he heard the fall of Antwerp, — 
for I went to her door, screeching through the key- 
hole 'Vicksburg is ours !' just as that other pere de 
famille, more potent, but I trust not more respect- 
able than I, conveyed the news to his Infanta. 
( Vide, for the incident, an American work on the 
Netherlands, I. p. 263, and the authorities there 
cited.) It is contemptible on my part to speak 
thus frivolously of events which will stand out in 
such golden letters so long as America has a his- 
tory, but I wanted to illustrate the yearning for sym- 
pathy which I felt. You who were among people 
grim and self-contained usually, who, I trust, were 
falling on each other's necks in the public streets, 
shouting, with tears in their eyes, and triumph in 
their hearts, can picture my isolation. 

" I have never faltered in my faith, and in the 
darkest hours, when misfortunes seemed thronging 
most thickly upon us, I have never felt the want 
of anything to lean against ; but I own I did feel 
like shaking hands with a few hundred people 
when I 'heard of our Fourth of July, 1863, work, 
and should like to have heard and joined in an 
American cheer or two 

" .... I have not much to say of matters here to 
.interest you. We have had an intensely hot, his- 
torically hot, and very long and very dry summer. 



A Memoir. 



125 



I never knew before what a drought meant. In 
Hungary the suffering is great, and the people are 
killing the sheep to feed the pigs with the mutton. 
Here about Vienna the trees have been almost 
stripped of foliage ever since the end of August. 
There is no glory in the grass nor verdure in any- 
thing. 

" In fact, we have nothing green here but the 
Archduke Max, who firmly believes that he is 
going forth to Mexico to establish an American 
empire, and that it is his divine mission to destroy 
the dragon of democracy and re-establish the true 
Church, the Eight D^ine, and all sorts of games. 
Poor young man \ . J, . 

"Our information from home is to the 12th. 
Charleston seems to be in articulo mortis, but how 
forts nowadays seem to fly in the face of Scrip- 
ture. Those founded on a rock and built of it fall 
easily enough under the rain of Parrotts and Dahl- 
grens, while the house built of sand seems to bid 
defiance to the storm." 

In quoting from these confidential letters I have 
been restrained from doing full justice to their 
writer by the fact that he spoke with such entire 
freedom of persons as well as events. But if they 
could be read from beginning to end, no one could 
help feeling that his love for his own country, and 



Sect. XVII. 
1862. 



Letter from 
Vienna. 



Great 
drought. 



Nothing 
green but 
poor Maxi- 
milian. 



The house 
on a rock 
and the 
house of 
sand. 



126 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVII. 
1862. 



His patriot- 
ism not a de- 
fence against 
malevolence. 



passionate absorption of every thought in the strife 
upon which its existence as a nation depended, were 
his very life during all this agonizing period. He 
can think and talk of nothing else, or, if he turns 
for a moment to other subjects, he reverts to the 
one great central interest of "American politics,"; 
of which he says in one of the letters from which I 
have quoted, " There is nothing else %DOTtli thinking 
of in the world." 

But in spite of his public record as the his- 
torian of the struggle for liberty and the champion 
of its defenders, and while every letter he wrote 
betrayed in every word the intensity of his patri- 
otic feeling, he was not safe against the attacks of 
malevolence. A train laid by unseen hands was 
waiting for the spark to kindle it, and this came 
at last in the shape of a letter from an unknown 
individual, — a letter the existence of which ought 
never to have been a matter of official recognition. 



A Memoir. 



127 



XVIII. 

Besignation of his Office. — Causes of his Resig- 
nation, {1866-1867.) 

It is a relief to me that just here, where I come 
to the first of two painful episodes in this brilliant 
and fortunate career, I can preface my statement 
with the generous words of one who speaks with 
authority of his predecessor in office. 

The Hon. John Jay, Ex-Minister to Austria, in 
the Tribute to the memory of Motley read at a 
meeting of the New York Historical Society, wrote 
as follows : — 

(J* In singular contrast to Mr. Motley's brilliant 
career as an historian stands the fact recorded in 
our diplomatic annals that he was twice forced 
from the service as one who had forfeited the con- 
fidence of the American Government. This So- 
ciety, while he was living, recognized his fame as a 
statesman, diplomatist, and patriot, as belonging to 
America, and now that death has closed the career 
of Seward, Sumner, and Motley, it will be remem- 
bered that the great historian, twice humiliated, by 
orders from Washington, before the diplomacy and 



Sect. XVIII. 
1866-1867. 



Mr. Jay's 
tribute to 
Motley's 
memory. 



128 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVIII. 

1862. 

Mr. Jay's 
characteriza- 
tion of 
Motley's 
despatches. 



How he was 
regarded at 
Vienna. 



culture of Europe, appealed from the passions of 
the^ur to the verdict of history. 

" Having succeeded Mr. Motley at Vienna some 
two~ years after his departure, I had occasion to 
read most of his despatches, which exhibited a 
mastery of the subjects of which they treated, with 
much of the clear perception, the scholarly and 
philosophic tone and decided judgment, which, 
supplemented by his picturesque description, full 
of life and color, have given character to his histo- 
ries. They are features which might well have 
served to extend the remark of Madame de Stael 
that a great historian is almost a statesman. I can 
speak also from my own observation of the repu- 
tation which Motley left in the Austrian capital. 
Notwithstanding the decision with which, under 
the direction of Mr. Seward, he had addressed the 
minister of Foreign Affairs, Count MensdorfF, after- 
wards the Prince Diedrickstein, protesting against 
the departure of an Austrian force of one thousand 
volunteers, who were about to embark for Mexico 
in aid of the ill-fated Maximilian, — a protest 
which at the last moment arrested the project, — 
Mr. Motley and his amiable family were always 
spoken of in terms of cordial regard and respect by 
members of the imperial family and those eminent 
statesmen, Count de Beust and Count Andrassy. 
His death, I am sure, is mourned to-day by the 



A Memoir. 



129 



representatives of the historic names of Austria 
and Hungary, and by the surviving diplomats then 
residing near the Court of Vienna, wherever they 
may still be found, headed by their venerable 
Doyen, the Baron de Heckeren." 

The story of Mr. Motley's resignation of his 
office and its acceptance by the Government is 
this. 

The President of the United States, Andrew 
Johnson, received a letter professing to be written 
from the Hotel Meurice, Paris, dated October 23, 
1866, and signed " George W. M'Crackin, of New 
York." This letter was filled with accusations di- 
rected against various public agents, ministers, and 
consuls, representing the United States in different 
countries. Its language was coarse, its assertions 
were improbable, its spirit that of the lowest of 
party scri bblers. It was bitter against New England, 
especially so against Massachusetts, and it singled 
out Motley for the most particular abuse. I think 
it is still questioned whether there was any such 
person as the one named, — at any rate, it bore the 
characteristic marks of those vulgar anonymous 
communications which rarely receive any atten- 
tion unless they are important enough to have the 
police set on the track of the writer to find his rat- 
hole, if possible. A paragraph in the Daily Adver- 



Skct. XVIII. 
1866. 



Story of Mr. 

Motley's 

resignation. 



The 

M'Crackin 

letter. 



130 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVIII. tiser of June 7, 1869 quotes from a Western paper 
a story to the effect that one William B. M'Cracken, 
who had recently died at , confessed to hav- 
ing written the M'Crackin letter. Motley, he said, 



Its author- 
sliip. 



What should 
have been 
done with it. 



r What was 
' done with it. 



had snubbed him and refused to lend him money. 
"He appears to have been a Bohemian of the 
lowest order." Between such authorship and the 
anonymous there does not seem to be much to 
choose. But the dying confession sounds in my 
ears as decidedly apocryphal. As for the letter, I 
had rather characterize it than reproduce it^ It is 
an offence to decency and a disgrace to the national 
record on which it is found. 

This letter of " George -W. M'Crackin" passed 
into the hands of Mr. Seward, the Secretary of 
State. Most gentlemen, 1 think, would have de- 
stroyed it on the spot, as it was not fit for the 
waste-basket. Some, more cautious, might have 
smothered it among the piles of their private com- 
munications. If any notice was taken of it, one 
would say that a private note to each of the gentle- 
men attacked might have warned him that there 
were malicious eavesdroppers about, ready to catch 
up any careless expression he might let fall and 
make a scandalous report of it to his detriment. 

The Secretary, acquiescing without resistance in 
a suggestion of the President, saw fit to address a 
formal note to several of the gentlemen mentioned 



A Memoir. 



131 



in the M'Crackin letter, repeating some of its offen- 
sive expressions, and requesting those officials to 
.deny or confirm the report that they had uttered 
them. 

A gentleman who is asked whether he has spoken 
in a " malignant " or " offensive " manner, whether 
he has " railed violently and shamefully " against 
the President of the United States, or against any- 
body else, might well wonder who would address 
such a question to the humblest citizen not sup- 
posed to be wanting in a common measure of self- 
respect. A gentleman holding an important official 
station in a foreign country, receiving a letter con- 
taining such questions, signed by the Prime Minis- 
ter of his government, if he did not think himself 
imposed upon by a forgery, might well consider 
himself outraged, v^ was a letter of this kind which 
was sent by the Secretary of State to the Minister 
Plenipotentiary to the Empire of Austria. Not 
quite all the vulgar insolence of the M'Crackin 
letter was repeated. Mr. Seward did not ask Mr. 
Motley to deny or confirm the assertion of the letter 
that he was a " thorough flunky " and " un-American 
functionary." But he did insult him with various 
questions suggested by the anonymous letter, — 
questions that must have been felt as an indignity 
by the most thick-skinned of battered politicians. 

Mr. Motley was very sensitive, very high-spirited. 



Sect. XVIII. 
1866. 

The 

M'Crackin 

letter. 



Mr. Seward 
questions 
Mr. Motley 
about it. 



132 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVIII 
1866. 



He replies 
immediately. 



He denies 
and denoun- 
ces the accu- 
sations. 



very impulsive, very patriotic, and singularly truth- 
ful. The letter of Mr. Seward to such a man was 
like a bufiet on the cheek of an unarmed officer. It 
stung like the thrust of a stiletto. It roused a re- 
sentment that could not find any words to give it 
expression. He could not wait to turn the insult 
over in his mind, to weigh the exact amount of 
affront in each question, to take counsel, to sleep 
over it, and reply to it with diplomatic measure 
and suavity. _One hour had scarcely elapsed before 
his answer was written. As to his feelings as an 
American, he appeals to his recor(i^y This might 
have shown that if he erred it was on the side of 
enthusiasm and extravagant expressions of rever- 
ence for the American people during the heroic 
years just passed. He denounces the accusations 
as pitiful fabrications and vile calumny. He 
blushes that such charges could have been uttered ; 
he is deeply wounded that Mr. Seward could have 
listened to such falsehood. He does not hesitate 
to say what his opinions are with reference to home 
questions, and especially to that of reconstruction. 

" These opinions," he says, " in the privacy of my 
own household, and to occasional American visitors, 
I have not concealed. The great question now 
presenting itself for solution demands the conscien- 
tious scrutiny of every American who loves his 
country and believes in the human progress of 



A Memoir. 



133 



which that country is one of the foremost repre- 
sentatives. I have never thought, during my resi- 
dence at Vienna, that because I have the honor of 
being a public servant of the American people I 
am deprived of the right of discussing within my 
own walls the gravest subjects that can interest 
freemen. A minister of the United States does not 
cease to be a citizen of the United States, as deeply 
interested as others In all that relates to the wel- 
fare of his country." /' 

Among the " occasional American visitors" spoken 
of above must have been some of those self-ap- 
pointed or hired agents called " interviewers," who 
do for the American public what the Venetian spies 
did for the Council of Ten, what the familiars of the 
Inquisition did for the priesthood, who invade every 
public man's privacy, who listen at every key-hole, 
who tamper with every guardian of secrets ; purvey- 
ors to the insatiable appetite of a public which 
must have a slain reputation to devour with its 
breakfast, as the monster of antiquity called regu- 
larly for his tribute of a spotless virgin. 

The " interviewer " has his use, undoubtedly, and 
often instructs and amuses his public with gossip 
they could not otherwise listen to. He serves the 
politician by repeating the artless and unstudied 
remarks which fall from his lips in a conversation 
which the reporter has been invited to take notes of. 



Sect. XVIII. 
1866. 



" Interview' 
ers." 



134 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVIII. 
1866. 

" Interview- 
ers," their 
use and their 
niischief- 
maldngr. 



He tickles the author's vanity by showing him off 
as he sits in his library unconsciously uttering 
the engaging items of self-portraiture which, as he 
well knows, are to be given to the public in next 
week's illustrated paper. The feathered end of his 
shaft titillates harmlessly enough, but too often 
the arrowhead is crusted with a poison worse than 
the Indian gets by mingling the wolfs gall with the 
rattlesnake's venom. No man is safe whose un- 
guarded threshold the mischief-making questioner 
has crossed. • The more unsuspecting, the more 
frank, the more courageous, the more social is the 
subject of his vivisection, the more easily does 
he get at his vital secrets, if he has any to be 
extracted. No man is safe if the hearsay reports 
of his conversation are to be given to the public 
without his own careful revision. When we re- 
member that a proof-text bearing on the mighty 
question of the future life, words of supreme sig- 
nificance, uttered as they were in the last hour, and 
by the lips to which we listen as to none other, — 
that this text depends for its interpretation on the 
position of a single comma, we can readily see what 
wrong may be done by the unintentional blunder of 
the most conscientious reporter. But too frequently 
it happens that the careless talk of an honest and 
high-minded man only reaches the public after fil- 
tering through the drain of some reckless hire- 



A Memoir. 



135 



ling's memory, — one who has played so long with 
other men's characters and good name that he for- 
gets they have any value except to fill out his 
morning paragraphs. 

/Whether the author of the scandalous letter 
which it was disgraceful to the Government to 
recbgnize was a professional interviewer or only a 
malicious amateur, or whether he was a paid " spot- 
ter," sent by some jealous official to report on the 
foreign ministers as is sometimes done in the case of 
conductors of city horse-cars, or whether the dying 
miscreant before i^entioned told the truth, cannot 
be certainly known. But those who remember Mr. 
Hawthorne's account of his consular experiences at 
Liverpool are fully aware to what intrusions and 
impertinences and impositions our national repre- 
sentatives in other countries are subjected. Those 
fellow-citizens who " often came to the consulate in 
parties of half a dozen or more, on no business 
whatever, but merely to subject their public servant 
to a rigid examination, and see how he was getting 
on with his duties," may very possibly have in- 
cluded among them some such mischief-maker as 
the author of the odious letter which received 
official recognition. ; Mr. Motley had spoken in 
one of his histories oF" a set of venomous famil- 
iars who glided through every chamber and coiled 
themselves at every fireside." He little thought 



Sect. XVIII. 
1866. 



What public 
servants are 
exposed to. 



Mr. Haw- 
thorne's ex- 
perience. 



136 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XVIII. 
1866. 



Thequestions 
addressed to 
Mr. Motley 
an insult. 



He resigns 
liis office. 



His resigna- 
tion accepted. 



that under his own roof he himself was to be the 
victim of an equally base espionage. 

It was an insult on the part of the Government to 
have sent Mr. Motley such a letter with sucli ques- 
tions as were annexed to it. No very exact rule 
can be laid down as to the manner in which an 
insult shall be dealt with. Something depends on 
temperament, and his was of the warmer com- 
plexion. / His first impulse, he says, was to content 
himself with a flat denial of the truth of the accu- 
sations. But his scrupulous honesty compelled him 
to make a plain statement of his opinions, and to 
avow the fact that he had made no secret of them in 
conversation under conditions where he had a right 
to speak freely of matters quite apart from his official 
duties. His answer to the accusation was denial of 
its charges ; his reply to the insult was his resignation. 

It may be questioned whether this was the wisest 
course, but wisdom is often disconcerted by an in- 
dignity, and even a meek Christian may forget to 
turn the other cheek after receiving the first blow 
until the natural man has asserted himself by a 
retort in kind. But the wrong was committed ; his 
resignation was accepted ; the vulgar letter, not fit 
to be spread out on these pages, is enrolled in the 
records of the nation, and the first deep wound was 
inflicted on the proud spirit of one whose renown 
had shed lustre on the whole country. 



A Memoir. 



137 



That the burden of this wrong may rest where it 
belongs, I quote the following statement from Mr. 
Jay's paper, already referred to. 

" It is due to the memory of Mr. Seward to say, 
and there would seem now no further motive for 
concealing the truth, that I was told in Europe, on 
what I regarded as reliable authority, that there 
was reason to believe that on the receipt of Mr. 
Motley's resignation Mr. Seward had written to 
him declining to accept it, and that this letter, by a 
telegraphic order of President Johnson, had been 
arrested in the hands of a despatch agent before 
its delivery to Mr. Motley, and that the curt letter 
of the~^8th of April had been substituted in its 
stead." ) 

The'^Hon. John Bigelow, late Minister to France, 
has published an article in the International 
Eeview for July -August, 1878, in which he de- 
fends his late friend Mr. Seward's action in this 
matter at the expense of the President, Mr. Andrew 
Johnson, and not without inferences unfavorable to 
the discretion of Mr. Motley. Many readers will 
think that the simple record of Mr. Seward's unre- 
sisting acquiescence in the action of the President 
is far from being to his advantage. I quote from 
his own conversation as carefully reported by his 
friend Mr. Bigelow. \ " Mr. Johnson was in a state 
of intense irritation, anTmore or less suspicious of 



Sect. XVIII. 
1866. 



Mr. Seward 
cleared by a 
" reliable 
authority." 



Mr. SewardC^ 
not cleared, \ 
but defended! 
by Hon. / 
John Bige- 
low. / 



138 



John Lotlirop Motley. 



Sect. XVIII 
1867- 



Mr. Johnson 
intensely 
irritated and 
suspicious of 
everybody. 



Mr. Seward 
compliant. 



everybody about him." " Instead of throwing the 
letter into the fire," the President handed it to 
him, the Secretary, and suggested answering it, 
and without a word, so far as appears, he simply 
answered, " Certainly, sir." Again, the Secretary 
having already written to Mr. Motley that " his 
answer was satisfactory," the President, on reach- 
ing the last paragraph of Mr. Motley's letter, in 
which he begged respectfully to resign his post, 
"without waiting to learn what Mr. Seward had 
done or proposed to do, exclaimed, with a not 
unnatural asperity, ' Well, let him go,' and ' on 
hearing this,' said Mr. Seward, laughing, ' I did not 
read my despatch.' " Many persons will think that 
the counsel for the defence has stated the plaintiff's 
case so strongly that there is nothing left for him 
but to show his ingenuity and his friendship for the 
late Secretary in a hopeless argument. At any rate, 
(Mr. Seward appears not to have made the slightest 
effort to protect Mr. Motley against his coarse and 
jealous chief at two critical moments, and though 
Vhis own continuance in office may have been more 
important to the State4/han that of the Vicar of Bray 
was to the Church(Jbe ought to have risked some- 
thing, as it seems to me, to shield such a patriot, 
such a gentleman, such a scholar, from ignoble treat- 
ment ; he ought to have been as ready to guard Mr. 
Motley from wrong as Mr. Bigelow has shown him- 



A Memoir. 



139 



self to shield Mr. Seward from reproach, and his 
task, if more delicate, was not more difficult. I am 
willing to accept Mr. Bigelow's loyal and honorable 
defence of his friend's memory as the best that could 
be said for Mr. Seward, but the best defence in this 
case is little better than an impeachment. As for 
Mr. Johnson, he had held the weapon of the most 
relentless of the Parcse so long that his suddenly 
clipping the thread of a foreign minister's tenure 
of office in a fit of jealous anger is not at all sur- 
prising. 

Thus finished Mr. Motley's long and successful dip- 
lokiatic service at the Court of Austria. He may have 
been judged hasty in resigning his place ; he may 
have committed himself in expressing his opinions 
too strongly before strangers, whose true character 
as spies and eavesdroppers he was too high-minded 
to suspect... But no caution could have protected 
him against a slanderer who hated the place he 
came from, the company he kept, the name he had 
made famous, to whom his very look and bearing 
— such as belong to a gentleman of natural refine- 
ment and good breeding — must have been a per- 
sonal grievance and an unpardonable offence. 

I will add, in illustration of what has been said, 
and as showing his feeling with reference to the 
matter, an extract from a letter to me from Vienna, 
dated the 12th of March, 1867. 



Sect. XVIII. 
1866. 



Mr. Motley 
the victim of 
a slanderer. 



140 



John Lotlirop Motley. 



Sect. XVIII 

1867. 

His letter to 
me about the 
M'Crackia 
business. 



"... As SO many friends and so many strangers 
have said so much that is gratifying to me in pub- 
lic and private on this very painful subject, it would 
be like affectation, in writing to so old a friend as 
you, not to touch upon it. I shall confine myself, 
however, to one fact, which, so far as I know, may 
be new to you. 

" Geo. W. M'Cracken is a man and a name ut- 
terly unknown to me. 

"With the necessary qualification which every 
man who values truth must make when asserting 
such a negation, — viz., to the very best of my 
memory and belief, — I never set eyes on him nor 
heard of him until now, in the whole course of my 
life. Not a member of my family or of the legation 
has the faintest recollection of any such person. I 
am quite convinced that he never saw me nor heard 
the sound of my voice. That his letter was a tissue 
of vile calumnies, shameless fabrications, and un- 
blushing and contemptible falsehoods, — by whom- 
soever uttered, — I have stated in a reply to what 
ought never to have been an ofi&cial letter. No 
man can regret more than I do that such a corre- 
spondence is enrolled in the capital among American 
State Papers. I shall not trust myself to speak 
of the matter. It has been a sufficiently public 
scandal." 



A Memoir. 



141 



Last Two Volumes of the ^^ History of the United 
Netherlands.^^ — General Criticisms of Dutch Schol- 
ars on Motley's Historical Works. {1867-1868.) 

In his letter to me of March 12, 1867, just cited, 
Mr. Motley writes : — 

"My two concluding volumes of the United 
Netherlands are passing rapidly through the press. 
Indeed, Volume III. is entirely printed and a third 
of Volume IV. 

" If I live ten years longer I shall have probably 
written the natural sequel to the first two works, — 
viz., the Thirty Years' War. After that I shall 
cease to scourge the public. 

" I don't know whether my last two volumes are 
good or bad — I only know that they are true — 
but that need n't make them amusing. 

" Alas — one never knows when one becomes a 
bore." 

In 186B the two concluding volumes of the 
History of the Netherlands were published at the 
same time in London and in New York. The events 



Sect. XIX. 
1867-1868. 



His literary 
plans. 



Last two 
volumes of "\ 
the History \ 
of the United ' 
Netherlands. / 



142 



John Lothrop Motley, 



Sect. XIX. 
1868. 

History of 
the United 
Netherlands. 



His style. 



described and the characters delineated in these 
two volumes had, perhaps, less peculiar interest for 
English and American readers than some of those 
which had lent attraction to the preceding ones. 
There was no scene like the siege of Antwerp, no 
story like that of the Spanish Armada. There were 
no names that sounded to our ears like those of 
Sir Philip Sidney and Leicester and Amy Eobsart. 
But the main course of his narrative flowed on with 
the same breadth and depth of learning and the 
same brilliancy of expression. The monumental 
work continued as nobly as it had begun. The 
facts had been slowly, quietly gathered one by one, 
like pebbles from the empty channel of a brook. 
The style was fluent, impetuous, abundant, impa- 
tient, as it were, at times, and leaping the sober 
boundaries prescribed to it, like the torrent which 
rushes through the same channel when the rains have 
filled it. Thus there was matter for criticism in his 
use of language. He was not always careful in 
the construction of his sentences. He introduced 
expressions now and then into his vocabulary 
which reminded one of his earlier literary efforts.' 
He used stronger language at times than was ne- 
cessary, coloring too highly, shading too deeply in 
his pictorial delineations. To come to the matter of 
his narrative, it must be granted that not every reader 
will care to follow him through all the details of dip- 



y 



A Memoir. 



143 



lomatic intrigues which he has with such industry 
and sagacity extricated from the old manuscripts 
in which they had long lain hidden. But we turn a 
few pages and we come to one of those descriptions 
which arrest us at once and show him in his power 
and brilliancy as a literary artist. His characters 
move before us with the features of life ; we can 
see Elizabeth, or Philip, or Maurice, not as a name 
connected with events, but as a breathing and act- 
ing human being, to be loved or hated, admired or 
despised as if he or she were our contemporary. 
That all his judgments would not be accepted as 
final we might easily anticipate ; he could not help 
writing more or less as a partisan, but he was a 
partisan on the side of freedom in politics and re- 
ligion, of human nature as against every form of 
tyranny, secular or priestly, of noble manhood 
wherever he saw it as against meanness and vio- 
lence and imposture, whether clad in the soldier's 
mail or the emperor's purple. His sternest critics, 
and even these admiring ones, were yet to be found 
among those who with fundamental beliefs at vari- 
ance with his own followed him in his lomr re- 
searches among tlie dusty annals of the past. 

The work of the learned M. Groen van Prinsterer 
(" Maurice et Barnevelt, Etude Historique. Utrecht, 
1875 "), devoted expressly to the revision and cor- 
rection of what the author considers the erroneous 



Sect. XIX. 
1868. 



History of 
the United 
Netherlands. 



His charac- 
ters. 



His judg. 
meuts. 



M. Groen 
ran Prins- 
terer. 



144 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XIX. 
1868. 



Account of 
his first in- 
terview with 
Mr. Motley. 



views of Mr. Motley on certain important points, 
bears, notwithstanding, such sincere and hearty trib- 
ute to his industry, his acquisitions, his brilliant 
qualities as a historian, that some extracts from 
it will be read, I think, with interest. 

" My first interview, more than twenty years ago, 
with Mr. Lothrop Motley, has left an indelible im- 
pression on my memory. 

"It was the 8th of August, 1853. A note is 
handed me from our eminent Archivist Bakhuizen 
van den Brink. It informs me that I am to receive 
a visit from an American, who, having been struck 
by the analogies between the United Provinces and 
the United States, between Washington and the 
founder of our independence, has interrupted his 
diplomatic career to write the life of William the 
First ; that he has already given proof of ardor and 
perseverance, having worked in libraries and among 
collections of manuscripts, and that he is coming 
to pursue his studies at the Hague. 

"While I am surprised and delighted with this 
intelligence, I am informed that Mr. Motley him- 
self is waiting for my answer. My eagerness to 
make the acquaintance of such an associate in my 
sympathies and my labors may be well imagined. 
But how shall I picture my surprise, in presently 
discovering that this unknown and indefatigable 



A Memoir i 



145 



fellow-worker has really read, I say read and re- 
read our Quartos, our Folios, the enormous volumes 
of BoT, of van Metcren, besides a multitude of books, 
of pamphlets, and even of unedited documents. 
Already he is familiar with the events, the changes 
of condition, the characteristic details of the life of 
his and my hero. Not only is he acquainted with 
my Archives, but it seems as if there was nothing 
in this voluminous collection of which he was igno- 
rant 



" In sending me the last volume of his History 
of the Foundation of the Eepublic of the Nether- 
lands, Mr. Motley wrote to me : ' Without the help 
of the Archives I could never have undertaken the 
difficult task I had set myself, and you will have 
seen at least from my numerous citations that I 
have made a sincere and conscientious study of 
them.' Certainly in reading such a testimonial I 
congratulated myself on the excellent fruit of my 
labors, but the gratitude expressed to me by Mr. 
Motley was sincerely reciprocated. The Archives 
are a scientific collection, and my Manual of Na- 
tional History, written in Dutch, hardly gets be- 
yond the limits of my own country. And here is 
a stranger, become our compatriot in virtue of the 
warmth of his sympathies, who has accomplished 
what was not in my power. By the detail and the 
charm of his narrative, by the matter and form of 



Sect. XIX. 
1868. 



M. Groen 
van Prius- 
terer. 



146 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XIX. 
1868. 

M. Groen 
van Prins- 
terer. 



Historians 
and archi- 
vists. 



a work which the universality of the English lan- 
guaeje and numerous translations were to render 
cosmopolitan, Mr. Motley, like that other illustri- 
ous historian, Prescott, lost to science by too early 
death, has popularized in both hemispheres the 
sublime devotion of the Prince of Orange, the ex- 
ceptional and providential destinies of my country, 
and the benedictions of the Eternal for all those 
who trust in Him and tremble only at his Word." 

The old Dutch scholar differs in many impor- 
tant points from Mr. Motley, as might be expected 
from his creed and his life-long pursuits. This I 
shall refer to in connection with Motley's last 
work, " John of Barneveld." An historian among 
archivists and annalists reminds one of Sir John 
Lubbock in the midst of his ant-hills. Undoubtedly 
he disturbs the ants in their praiseworthy indus- 
try, much as his attentions may flatter them. Un- 
questionably the ants (if their means of expressing 
themselves were equal to their apparent intellectual 
ability) could teach him many things that he has 
overlooked and correct him in many mistakes. But 
the ants will labor ingloriously without an observer 
to chronicle their doings, and the archivists and 
annalists will pile up facts forever like so many 
articulates or mollusks or radiates, until the verte- 
brate historian comes with his generalizing ideas. 



A Memoir. 



147 



his beliefs, his prejudices, his idiosyncrasies of all 
kinds, and brings the facts into a more or less imper- 
fect, but still organic series of relations. The his- 
tory which is not open to adverse criticism is worth 
little, except as material, for it is written without 
taking cognizance of those higher facts about which 
men must differ ; of which Guizot writes as fol- 
lows, as quoted in the work of M. Groen van Prin- 
sterer himself. 

" It is with facts that our minds are exercised, it 
has nothing but facts as its materials, and when it 
discovers general laws these laws are themselves 

facts which it determines In the study 

of fads the intelligence may allow itself to be 
crushed ; it may lower, narrow, materialize itself ; 
it may come to believe that there are no facts ex- 
cept those which strike us at the first glance, which 
come close to us, which fall, as we say, under our 
senses : a great and gross error ; there are remote 
facts, immense, obscure, sublime, very difficult to 
reach, to observe, to describe, and which are not 
any less facts for these reasons, and which man is 
not less obliged to study and to know ; and if he 
fails to recognize them or forgets them, his thought 
will be prodigiously abased, and ^11 his ideas carry 
the stamp of this deterioration." 

In that higher region of facts which belongs to 
the historian, whose task it is to interpret as well 



Sect. XIX. 
1868. 



M. Guizot 
QVi facts. 



148 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XIX. 
1868. 



Testimony of 
Dutch critics 
to Motley's 
sincerity 
and truth- 
fulness. 



as to transcribe, Mr. Motley showed, of course, the 
political and religious school in which he had been 
brought up. Every man has a right to his " per- 
sonal equation " of prejudice, and Mr. Motley, whose 
ardent temperament gave life to his writings, be- 
trayed his sympathies in the disputes of which he 
told the story, in a way to insure sharp criticism 
from those of a different way of thinking. Thus it 
is that in the work of M. Groen van Prinsterer, from 
which I have quoted, he is considered as having 
been betrayed into error, while his critic recog- 
nizes " his manifest desire to be scrupulously im- 
partial and truth- telling." And M. Fruin, another 
of his Dutch critics, says, " His sincerity, his per- 
spicacity, the accuracy of his laborious researches, 
are incontestable." 

Some of the criticisms of Dutch scholars will be 
considered in the pages which deal with his last 
work, " The Life of John of Barneveld." 



A Memoir. 



149 



XX. 

Visit to America. — Residence at No. 2 Park Street, 
Boston. — Address on the coming Presidential 
Election. — Addi^ess on the Historic Progress of 
American Democracy. — Appointed Minister to 
England. {1868 - 1869. ) 

In June, 1868, Mr. Motley returned with his 
family to Boston, and estabhshed himself in the 
house No. 2 Park Street. During his residence 
here he entered a good deal into society, and enter- 
tained many visitors in a most hospitable and 
agreeable way. 

On the 20th of October, 1868, he delivered an 
address before the Parker Fraternity, in the ^usic 
Hall, by special invitation. Its title was rFour 
questions for the people, at the Presidential Elec- 
tion." This was of course what is commonly called 
an electioneering speech, but a speech full of noble 
sentiments and eloquent expression. Here are two 
of its paragraphs : — 

"Certainly there have been bitterly contested 
elections in this country before. Party spirit is 
always rife, and in such vivid, excitable, disputa- 



Sect. XX. 

1868. 



Return to 
Boston. 



Address 
before the 
Parker Fra- 
ternity. 



150 



John LotJirop Motley. 



Sect. XX. 
1868. 

Address 
before the 
Parker Fra- 
ternity. 



tious communities as ours are, and I trust always 
will be, it is the very soul of freedom. To those 
who reflect upon the means and end of popular 
government, nothing seems more stupid than in 
grand generalities to deprecate party spirit. Why, 
government by parties and through party machinery 
is the only possible method by which a free gov- 
ernment can accomplish the purpose of its exist- 
ence. The old republics of the past may be said 
to have fallen, not because of party spirit, but be- 
cause there was no adequate machinery by which 
party spirit could develop itself with facility and 
regularity. 

" . . . . And if our Eepublic be true to herself, the 
future of the human race is assured by our ex- 
ample. No sweep of overwhelming armies, no pon- 
derous treatises on the rights of man, no hymns 
to liberty, though set to martial music and resound- 
ing with the ful] diapason of a million human 
throats, can exert so persuasive an influence as 
does the spectacle of a great republic, occupying a 
quarter of the civilized globe, and governed quietly 
and sagely by the people itself." 

A large portion of this address is devoted to the 
proposition that it is just and reasonable to pay our 
debts rather than to repudiate them, and that the 
nation is as much bound to be honest as is the 
individual. " It is an aw^ful thing," he says, " that 



A Memoir, 



151 



this should be a question at all," but it was one 
of the points on which the election turned, for all 
that. 

In his advocacy of the candidate with whom 
and the government of which he became the head, 
his relations became afterwards so full of personal 
antagonism, he spoke as a man of his ardent nature 
might be expected to speak on such an occasion. 
No one doubts that his admiration of General 
Grant's career was perfectly sincere,, and no one at 
the present day can deny that thje^ great Captain 
stood before the historian with such a record as 
one familiar with the deeds of heroes and patriots 
might well consider as entitling him to the honors 
too often grudged to the living to be wasted on the 
dead. The speaker only gave voice to the widely 
prevailing feelings which had led to his receiving 
the invitation to speak. The time was one which 
called for outspoken utterance, and there was not 
a listener whose heart did not warm as he heard 
the glowing words in which the speaker recorded 
the noble achievements of the soldier who must in 
so many ways have reminded him of his favorite 
character, William the Silent. 

On the 16th of December of this same year, 1868, 
Mr. Motley delivered an address before the New 
York Historical Society, on the occasion of the 
sixty-fourth anniversary of its foundation. The 



Sect. XX. 
1868. 



Address 
before the 
Parker Fra- 
ternity. 



Address 
before the 
New York 
Historical 
Society. 



152 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XX. 
1868. 



president of the society, Mr. Hamilton Fish, intro-j 
duced the speaker as one "whose name belongs to| 
no single country, and to no single age. As a| 
statesman and diplomatist and patriot, he belongs 1 
to America ; as a scholar, to the world of letters ;/» 
as a historian, all ages will claim him in the future." 
His subject was " Historic Progress and American 
Democracy." The discourse is, to use his own words, 
" a rapid sweep through the eons and the centuries," 
illustrating the great truth of the development of 
the race from its origin to the time in which we are 
living. It is a long distance from the planetary fact 
of the obliquity of the equator, which gave the earth 
its alternation of seasons, and rendered the history, 
if not the existence of man and of civilization a pos- 
sibility, to the surrender of General Lee under the 
apple-tree at Appomattox Court-House. jSTo one 
but a scholar familiar with the course of history 
could have marshalled such a procession of events 
into a connected and intelligible sequence. It is 
indeed a flight rather than a march ; the reader is 
borne along as on the wings of a soaring poem, and 
sees the rising and decaying empires of history be- 
neath him as a bird of passage marks the succession 
of cities and wilds and deserts as he keeps pace with 
the sun in his journey. Its eloquence, its patriot- 
ism, its crowded illustrations, drawn from vast re- 
sources of knowledge, its epigrammatic axioms, its 



A Memoir. 



153 



occasional pleasantries, are all characteristic of the 
writer. 

Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck, the venerable senior 
member of the society, proposed the vote of thanks 
to Mr. Motley with words of warm commendation. 
Mr.JWilliam Cullen Bryant jose and said : — 
" I take great pleasure in seconding the resolution 
which has just been read. The eminent historian 
of the Dutch Eepublic, who has made the stor}^ of 
its earlier days as interesting as that of Athens and 
Sparta, and who has infused into the narrative the 
generous glow of his own genius, has the highest 
of titles to be heard with respectful attention by the 
citizens of a community which, in its origin, was an 
offshoot of that renowned republic. And cheerfully 
has that title been recognized, as the vast audience 
assembled here to-night, in spite of the storm, fully 
testifies ; and well has our illustrious friend spoken 
of the growth of civilization and of the improve- 
ment in the condition of mankind, both in the Old 
World — the institutions of which he has so lately 
observed — and in the country which is proud to 
claim him as one of her children." 

Soon after the election of General Grant, Mr. 
Motley received the appointment of Minister to 
England. That the position was one which was in 
many respects most agreeable to him canix)t be 



Sect. XX. 
1868-1869. 



Vote of 
thanks. 
Mr. Ver- 
plauck. 



Mr. Bryant 



Appointed 
Minister to 
England. 



154 



John Lothrop Motley, 



Sect. XX. 
1868-1869. 



His feelings 
about his ap- 
pointment. 



doubted. Yet it was not with unmingled feelings 
of satisfaction, not without misgivings which warned 
him but too truly of the dangers about to encom- 
pass him, that he accepted the place. He writes to 
me on April 16, 1869 : — 

" .... I feel anything but exultation at present, 

— rather the opposite sensation. I feel that I am 
placed higher than I deserve, and at the same time 
that I am taking greater responsibilities than ever 
were assumed by me before. Yoii will be indulgent 
to my mistakes and shortcomings, — and who can 
expect to avoid them ? But the world will be cruel, 
and the times are threatening. I shall do my best 

— but the best may be poor enough — and keep 'a 
heart for any fate.' " 



A Memoir. 



155 



XXI. 

Becall from the English Mission. — Its Alleged and 
its Probable Reasons. (1869-1870.) 

The misgivings thus expressed to me in confi- 
dence, natural enough in one who had already 
known, what it is to fall on evil days and evil 
tongues, were but too well justified by after events. 
I could have wished to leave untold the story of 
the English mission, an episode in Motley's life full 
of heart-burnings, and long to be regretted as a pas- 
sage of American history. But his living appeal to 
my indulgence comes to me from his grave as a call 
for his defence, however little needed, at least as 
a part of my tribute to his memory. It is little 
needed, because the case is clear enough to all 
intelligent readers of our diplomatic history, and 
because his cause has been amply sustained by 
others in many ways better qualified than myself 
to do it justice. The task is painful, for if a wrong 
was done him it must be laid at the doors of those 
whom the nation has delighted to honor and whose 
services no error of judgment or feeling or conduct 
can ever induce us to forget. If he confessed him- 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



The English 
Mission. 



156 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



His nomina- 
tion unani- 
mously con- 
lii'med. 



He goes to 
England. 



Addresses at 
Liverpool. 



Conversation 
M'ith Lord 
Clarendon. 



Some expres- 
sions object- 
ed to. 



self liable, like the rest of us, to mistakes and short- 
comings, we must remember that the great officers 
of the Government who decreed his downfall were 
not less the subjects of human infirmity. 

The outline to be filled up is this : A new admin- 
istration had just been elected. The " Alabama 
Treaty," negotiated by Motley's predecessor, Mr. 
Reverdy Johnson, had been rejected by the Senate. 
The minister was recalled, and Motley, nominated 
without opposition and unanimously confirmed by 
the Senate, was sent to England in his place. He 
was welcomed most cordially on his arrival at Liver- 
pool, and replied in a similar strain of good feeling, 
expressing the same kindly sentiments which may 
be found in his instructions. Soon after arriving 
in London he had a conversation with Lord Claren- 
don, the British Foreign Secretary, of which he sent 
a full report to his own government. While the 
reported conversation was generally approved of in 
the government's despatch acknowledging it, it was 
hinted that some of its expressions were stronger 
than were required by the instructions, and that 
one of its points was not conveyed in precise con- 
formity with the President's view. The criticism 
was very gently worded, and the despatch closed 
with a somewhat guarded paragraph repeating the 
Government's approbation. 

This was the first offence alleged against Mr. 



A Memoir. 



157 



Motley. The second ground of complaint was that 
he had shown written minutes of this conversation 
to Lord Clarendon to obtain his confirmation of its 
exactness, and that he had — as he said, inadver- 
tently — omitted to make mention to the Govern- 
ment of this circumstance until some weeks after 
the time of the interview. 

He was requested to explain to Lord Clarendon 
that a portion of his presentation and treatment of 
the subject discussed at the interview immediately 
after his arrival was disapproved by the Secretary 
of State, and he did so in a written communication, 
in which he used the very words employed by Mr. 
Fish in his criticism of the conversation with Lord 
Clarendon. 

An alleged mistake ; a temperate criticism, coup- 
led with a general approval ; a rectification of the 
mistake criticised. All this within the first two 
months of Mr. Motley's official residence in London. 

No further fault was found with him, so far as 
appears, in the discharge of his duties, to which 
he must have devoted himself faithfully, for he 
writes to me, under the date of December 27, 1870 : 
" I have worked harder in the discharge of this mis- 
sion than I ever did in my life." This from a man 
whose working powers astonished the old Dutch 
archivist, Groen van Prinsterer, means a good deal. 

More than a year had elapsed since the inter- 



Sect. XXI. 
1869 - 1870. 

Showed min- 
utes of con- 
versation to 
Lord Clar- 
endon. 



Requested 
to explain, 
and does so. 



All this 
within first 
two months 
of his official 
residence. 



158 



John LotUrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 

Instructions 
of Septem- 
ber 25, 1869. 



No sign of 
distnist of 
him or dis- 
content with 
him. 



view with Lord Clarendon, which had been the 
subject of criticism. In the mean time a paper of 
instructions was sent to Motley, dated September 
25, 1869, in which the points in the report of his 
interview which had been found fault with are so 
nearly covered by similar expressions, that there 
seemed no real ground left for difference between 
the Government and the minister. Whatever over- 
statement there had been, these new instructions 
would imply that the Government was now ready to 
go quite as far as the minister had gone, and in some 
points to put the case still more strongly. Every- 
thing was going on quietly. Important business 
had been transacted, with no sign of distrust or 
discontent on the part of the Government as re- 
garded Motley. Whatever mistake he was thought 
to have committed was condoned by amicable treat- 
ment, neutralized by the virtual indorsement of the 
Government in the instructions of the 25th of Sep- 
tember, and obsolete as a ground of quarrel by 
lapse of time. The question about which the mis- 
understanding, if such it deserves to be called, 
had taken place, was no longer a possible source of 
disagreement, as it had long been settled that the 
Alabama case should only be opened again at the 
suggestion of the British Government, and that it 
should be transferred to Washington whenever that 
suggestion should again bring it up for consideration. 



A Memoir. 



159 



Such was the aspect of affairs at the American 
Legation in London. No foreign ministjer felt more 
secure in his place than Mr. Motley. " I thought 
myself," he says in the letter of December 27, " en- 
tirely in the confidence of my own government, 
and I know that I had the thorough confidence 
and the friendship of the leading personages in 
England." All at once, on the first of July, 1870, 
a letter was written by the Secretary of State, re- 
questing him to resign. This gentle form of vio- 
lence is wxll understood in the diplomatic service. 
Horace Walpole says, speaking of Lady Archibald 
Hamilton : " They have civilly asked her and 
grossly forced her to ask civilly to go away, which 
she has done, with a pension of twelve hundred a 
year." Such a request is like the embrace of the 
" virgin " in old torture-chambers. She is robed in 
soft raiment, but beneath it are the knife-blades 
which are ready to lacerate and kill the victim, if 
he awaits the pressure of the machinery already in 
motion. 

Mr. Motley knew well what was the logical 
order in an official execution, and saw fit to let 
the Government work its will upon him as its ser- 
vant. In November he was recalled. 

The recall of a minister under such circumstan- 
ces is an unusual if not an unprecedented occur- 
rence. The government which appoints a citizen 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



All at once 
he is re- 
quested to 
resign. 



He does not 
resign, and 
is recalled. 



160 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



Dismissal 
under these 
circumstan- 
ces a great 
injury. 



Explanation 
souglit and 
supposed to 
he found in 
his relations 
with Mr. 
Sumner. 



to represent the country at a foreign court assumes 
a very serious obligation to him. The next admin- 
istration may turn him out and nothing will be 
thought of it. He may be obliged to ask for his 
passports and leave all at once if war is threatened 
between his own country and that which he repre- 
sents. He may, of course, be recalled for gross 
misconduct. But his dismissal is a very serious 
matter to him personally, and not to be thought of 
on the ground of passion or caprice. Marriage is 
a simple business, but divorce is a very different 
thing. The world wants to know the reason of it ; 
the law demands its justification. It was a great 
blow to Mr. Motley, a cause of indignation to those 
who were interested in him, a surprise and a mys- 
tery to the world in general. 

When he, his friends, and the public, all startled 
by this unexpected treatment, looked to find an 
explanation of it, one was found v/hich seemed to 
many quite sufficient. Mr. Sumner had been prom- 
inent among those who had favored his appoint- 
ment. A very serious breach had taken place 
between the President and Mr. Sumner on the 
important San Domingo question. It was a quar- 
rel, in short, neither more nor less, at least so far 
as the President was concerned. The proposed 
San Domingo treaty had just been rejected by the 
Senate, on the thirtieth day of June, and immedi- 



A Memoir. 



161 



ately thereupon, — the very next day, — the letter 
requesting Mr. Motley's resignation was issued by 
the Executive, This fact was interpreted as imply- 
ing something more than a mere coincidence. It 
was thought that Sumner's friend, who had been 
supported by him as a candidate for high office, 
who shared many of his political ideas and feel- 
ings, who was his intimate associate, his fellow- 
townsman, his companion in scholarship and cul- 
tivation, his sympathetic co -laborer in many ways, 
had been accounted and dealt with as the ally of 
an enemy, and that the shaft which struck to the 
heart of the sensitive Envoy had glanced from the 
ces triijlex of the obdurate Senator. 

Mr. Motley wrote a letter to the Secretary of 
State immediately after his recall, in which he 
reviewed his relations with the Government from 
the time of his taking office, and showed that no 
sufficient reason could be assierned for the treat- 
ment to which he had been subjected. He referred 
finally to the public rumor which assigned the 
President's hostility to his friend Sumner, growing 
out of the San Domingo treaty question, as the pause 
of his own removal, and to the coincidence between 
the dates of the rejection of the treaty and his dismis- 
sal, with an evident belief that these two occurrences 
were connected by something more than accident. 

To this, a reply was received from the Secretary 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



A " coinci- 
dence " or 
something 
more. 



He writes 
to the Sec- 
retary of 
State and 
refers to the 
rumors as 
the cause of 
his recall. 



162 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



The reply to 
Mr. Motley. 



No answer 
possible to 
such a letter. 



Hon. John 
Jay and the 
New York 
Historical 
Society. 



Mr. Jay's 
publication, 
" Motley's 
Appeal to 
History." 



of State's office, signed by Mr. Fish, but so objec- 
tionable in its tone and expressions that it has been 
generally doubted whether the paper could claim 
anything more of the Secretary's hand than his sig- 
nature. It travelled back to the old record of the 
conversation with Lord Clarendon, more than a' 
year and a half before, took up the old exceptions, 
warmed them over into grievances, and joined with 
them whatever the captatores verhorum, not extinct 
since Daniel Webster's time, could add to their num- 
ber. This was the letter which was rendered so 
peculiarly offensive by a most undignified compari- 
son which startled every well-bred reader. No an- 
swer was possible to such a letter, and the matter 
rested until the death of Mr. Motley caused it to 
be brought up once more for judgment. 

The Honorable John Jay, in his tribute to the 
memory of Mr. Motley, read at a meeting of the E"ew 
York Historical Society, vindicated his character 
against the attacks of the late Executive in such 
a way as to leave an unfavorable impression as to 
the course of the Government. Objection was made 
on this account to placing the tribute upon the min- 
utes of the Society. This led to a publication by 
Mr. Jay, entitled " Motley's Appeal to History," in 
which the propriety of the Society's action is ques- 
tioned, and the wrong done to him insisted upon 
and further illustrated. 



A Memoir. 



163 



The defence could not have fallen into better 
hands. Bearing a name which is, in itself, a title to 
the confidence of the American people, a diploma- 
tist familiar with the rights, the customs, the tradi- 
tions, the courtesies, which belong to the diplomatic 
service, the successor of Mr. Motley at Vienna,^ 
and therefore familiar with his official record, not 
self-made, which too commonly means half-made, 
but with careful training added to the instincts to 
which he had a right by inheritance, he could not 
allow the memory of such a scholar, of such a high- 
minded lover of his country, of so true a gentleman 
as Mr. Motley, to remain without challenge under 
the stigma of official condemnation. I must refer to 
Mr. Jay's Memorial tribute as printed in the news- 
papers of the day, and to his "Appeal" published 
in the International Eeview, for his convincing 
presentation of the case, and content myself with 
a condensed statement of the general and special 
causes of complaint against Mr. Motley, and the ex- 
planations which suggest themselves, as abundantly 
competent to show the insufficiency of the reasons 
alleged by the Government as an excuse for the 
manner in which he was treated. 

The grounds of complaint against Mr. Motley are 
to be looked for : 

1. In the letter of Mr. Fish to Mr. Moran, of 
December 30, 1870. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



Mr. Jay 
speaks with 
authority 
for his pre- 
decessor. 



164 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869. 



Examination 
of the ground 
of complaint 
against Mr. 
Motley. 



Interview 
with Lord 
Clarendou. 



Conversation 
implies ex- 
temporiza- 
tion. 



2. In Mr. Bancroft Davis's letter to the New 
York Herald of January 4, 1878, entitled, "Mr. 
Sumner, the Alabama Claims and their Settle- 
ment." 

3. The reported conversations of General Grant. 

4. The reported conversations of Mr. Fish. 

In considering Mr, Fish's letter, we must first 
notice its animus. The manner in which Dickens's 
two old women are brought in is not only indeco- 
rous, but it shows a state of feeling from which 
nothing but harsh interpretation of every question- 
able expression of Mr. Motley's was to be expected. 

There is not the least need of maintaining the 
perfect fitness and rhetorical felicity of every phrase 
and every word used by him in his interview with 
Lord Clarendon. It is not to be expected that a 
minister, when about to hold a conversation with 
a representative of the government to which he is 
accredited, wiU. commit his instructions to memory 
and recite them, like a school-boy " speaking his 
piece." He will give them more or less in his own 
language, amplifying, it may be, explaining, illus- 
trating, at any rate paraphrasing in some degree, but 
endeavoring to convey an idea of their essential 
meaning. In fact, as any one can see, a conversation 
between two persons must necessarily imply a cer- 
tain amount of extemporization on the part of both. 
^ I do not believe any long and important conference 



A Memoir. 



165 



was ever had between two able men without each 
of them feeling that he had not spoken exactly in 
all respects as he would if he could say all over 



asfam. 



Doubtless, therefore, Mr. Motley's report of his 
conversation shows that some of his expressions 
might have been improved, and others might as well 
have been omitted. A man does not change his tem- 
perament on taking office. General Jackson still 
swore " by the Eternal," and his illustrious military 
successor of a more recent period seems, by his own 
showing, to have been liable to sudden impulses of 
excitement. It might be said of Motley, as it was 
said of Shakespeare by Ben Jonson, " aliquando suf- 
flaminandus erat." Yet not too much must be made 
of this concession. Only a determination to make 
out a case could, as it seems to me, have framed 
such an indictment as that which the Secretary 
constructed by stringing together a slender list of 
pretended peccadillos. One instance will show the 
extreme slightness which characterizes many of the 
grounds of inculpation : — 

The instructions say, " The government, in reject- 
ing the recent convention, abandons neither its own 
claims nor those of its citizens," etc. 

Mr. Motley said, in the course of his conversation, 
" At present, the United States Government, while 
withdrawing neither its national claims nor the 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



Slightness 
of the 
grounds of 
inculpation. 



166 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869 - 1870. 



Captious 
criticism. 



claims of its individual citizens against the British 
government/' etc. 

Mr. Fish says, " The determination of this gov- 
ernment not to abandon its claims nor those of its 
citizens, was stated parenthetically, and in such a 
subordinate way as not necessarily to attract the 
attention of Lord Clarendon." 

What reported conversation can stand a captious 
criticism like this ? Are there not two versions of 
the ten commandments which were given out in 
the thunder and smoke of Sinai, and would the 
Secretary hold that this would have been a suffi- 
cient reason to recall Moses from his " Divine Le- 
gation " at the court of the Almighty ? 

There are certain expressions which, as Mr. Fish 
shows them apart from their connection, do very 
certainly seem in bad taste, if not actually indis- 
creet and unjustifiable. Let me give an example : 
" .... instead of expressing the hope enter- 
tained by this government that there would be an 
early, satisfactory, and friendly settlement of the 
questions at issue, he volunteered the unnecessary, 
and, from the manner in which it was thrust in, the 
highly objectionable statement that ' the United 
States Government had no insidious purposes/" 
etc. 

This sounds very badly as Mr, Fish puts it ; let 
us see how it stands in its proper connection : — 



A Memoir. 



167 



" He [Lord Clarendon] added with some feeling, 
that in his opinion it would be highly objectionable 
that the question should be hung up on a peg, to 
be taken down at some convenient moment for us, 
when it mio'ht be difficult for the British f:jovern- 
ment to enter upon its solution, and when they 
might go into the debate at a disadvantage. These 
were, as nearly as I can remember, his words, and 
I replied very earnestly that I had already answered 
that question when I said that my instructions were 
to propose as brief a delay as would probably be 
requisite for the cooling of passions and for produ- 
cing the calm necessary for discussing the defects 
of the old treaty and a basis for a new one. The 
United States Government had no insidious pur- 
poses," etc. 

Is it not evident that Lord Clarendon suggested the 
idea which Mr. Motley repelled as implying an in- 
sidious mode of action ? Is it not just as clear that 
Mr. Fish's way of reproducing the expression with- 
out the insinuation which called it forth is a practical 
misstatement which does Mr. Motley great wrong ? 

One more example of the method of wringing a 
dry cloth for drops of evidence ought to be enough 
to show the wdiole spirit of the paper. 

Mr. Fish, in his instructions. " It might, indeed, 
well have occurred in the event of the selection by 
lot of the arbitrator or umpire in different cases, in- 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



Lord Clar- 
eudon's in- 
siuuatiou. 



Motley's 
reply. 



Unfair 
treatment 
of his words. 



168 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 

Verbal criti- 
cism and 
strained 
inferences. 



volving, however, precisely the same principles, that 
different awards, resting upon antagonistic prin- 
ciples, might have been made." 

Mr. Motley, in the conversation with Lord Claren- 
don "I called his lordship's attention to your 

very judicious suggestion that the throwing of the 
dice for umpires might bring about opposite decis- 
ions in cases arising out of identical principles. 
He agreed entirely that no principle was estab- 
lished by the treaty, but that the throwing of dice 
or drawing of lots was not a new invention on that 
occasion, but a not uncommon method in arbitra- 
tions. I only expressed the opinion that such an 
aleatory process seemed an unworthy method in 
arbitrations," etc. 

Mr. Fish, in his letter to Mr. Moran. " That he 
had in his mind at that interview something else 
than his letter of instructions from this Department 
would appear to be evident, when he says that ' he 
called his lordship's attention to your [my] very 
judicious suggestion that the throwing of dice for 
umpire might bring about opposite decisions.' The 
instructions which Mr. Motley received from me 
contained no suggestion about ' throwing of dice.' 
That idea is embraced in the suggestive words 
'aleatory process' (adopted by Mr. Motley), but 
previously applied in a speech made in the Senate 
on the question of ratifying the treaty." 



A Memoir. 



169 



Charles Sumner's Speech on the Johnson-Claren- 
don Treaty, April 13, 1869 "In the event 

of failure to agree, the arbitrator is determined 
' by lot ' out of two persons named by each side. 
Even if this aleatory proceeding were a proper de- 
vice in the umpirage of private claims, it is strongly 
inconsistent with the solemnity which belongs to 
the present question." 

It is " suggestive " that the critical Secretary, so 
keen in detecting conversational inaccuracies, hav- 
ing but two words to quote from a printed docu- 
ment, got one of them wrong. But this trivial 
comment must not lead the careful reader to neg- 
lect to note how much is made of what is really 
nothing at all. The word aleatory, whether used 
in its original and limited sense, or in its derived 
extension as a technical term of the civil law, was 
appropriate and convenient ; one especially likely 
to be remembered by any person who had read ]\lr. 
Sumner's speech, — and everybody had read it, — 
the Secretary liimself doubtless got the sugges- 
tion of determining the question "by lot" from it. 
What more natural than that it should be used 
again when the subject of appealing to chance came 
up in conversation ? It " was an excellent good 
word before it was ill-sorted," and we were for- 
tunate in havimr a minister who was scholar 



enough to know what it meant. 



was 
The language 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



Aleatory. 



170 



Jolm Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 

"Word-tor- 
turing as 
" showing 
animus." 



A conversa- 
tion disap- 
proved. 



The same 

conversation 

approved. 



used by Mr. Motley conveyed the idea of his in- 
structions plainly enough, and threw in a compli- 
ment to their author which should have saved this 
passage at least from the wringing process. — The 
example just given is, like the concession of bellig- 
erency to the insurgents by Great Britain, chiefly 
important as " showing animus." 

It is hardly necessary to bring forward other 
instances of virtual misrepresentation. If Mr. Mot- 
ley could have talked his conversation over again, 
he would very probably have changed some expres- 
sions. But he felt bound to repeat the interview 
exactly as it occurred, with all the errors to which 
its extemporaneous character exposed it. When a 
case was to be made out against him, the Secretary 
wrote, December 30, 1870 : — 

" Well might he say, as he did in a subsequent 
despatch on the 15th of July, 1869, that he had 
gone beyond the strict letter of his instructions. 
He might have added, in direct opposition to their 
temper and spirit." 

Of the same report the Secretary had said, June 
28, 1869: — 

" Your general presentation and treatment of the 
several subjects discussed in that interview meet 
the approval of this Department." This general 
approval is qualified by mild criticism of a single 
statement as not having been conveyed in "precise 



A Memoir 



171 



conformity " to the President's view. The minister 
was told he might be well content to rest the ques- 
tion on the very forcible presentation he had made 
of the American side of the question, and that if 
there were expressions used stronger than were 
required by his instructions they were in the right 
direction. The mere fact that a minute of this 
conversation was confidentially submitted to Lord 
Clarendon in order that our own Government mi^jht 
have his authority for the accuracy of tlie record, 
which was intended exclusively for its own use, 
and that this circumstance was overlooked and not 
reported to the government until some weeks after- 
ward, are the additional charges against Mr. Mot- 
ley. The submission of the despatch containing 
an account of the interview, the Secretary says, is 
not inconsistent with diplomatic usage, but it is 
inconsistent with the duty of a minister not to in- 
form his government of that submission. " Mr. 
Motley submitted the draft of his No. 8 to Lord 
Clarendon, and failed to communicate that fact to 
his government." — He did inform ^Ir. Fish, at 
any rate, on the 30th of July, and alleged " inad- 
vertence " as the reason for his omission to do it 
before. 

Inasmuch as submitting the despatch was not 
inconsistent with diplomatic usage, nothing seems 
left to find fault with but the not very long delay 



Sect. XXI. 
1%9-1870. 



Submission 
of the min- 
utes to Lord 
Clarendon. 



This not in^ 
consistent 
with diplo- 
matic usage. 



172 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



The Alabama 
question. 



Why the dis- 
cussion was 
withdrawn 
from Loudon. 



in mentioning the fact, or in his making the note 
" private and confidential/' as is so frequently done 
in diplomatic correspondence. 

Such were the grounds of complaint. On the 
strength of the conversation which had met with 
the general approval of the government, tempered 
by certain qualifications, and of the omission to re- 
port immediately to the government the fact of its 
verification by Lord Clarendon, the Secretary rests 
the case against Mr. Motley. On these grounds it 
was that, according to him, the President with- 
drew all right to discuss the Alabama question 
from the minister whose dismissal was now only 
a question of time. — But other evidence comes in 
here. 

Mr. Motley says, " It was, as I supposed, under- 
stood before my departure for England, although 
not publicly announced, that the so-called Alaba- 
ma negotiations, whenever renewed, should be con- 
ducted at Washington, in case of the consent of 
the British Government." 

Mr. Sumner says, in his " Explanation in Pteply 
to an Assault," " the Secretary in a letter to me at 
Boston, dated at Washington, October 9, 1869, in- 
forms me that the discussion of the question was 
withdrawn from- London 'hecmise (the italics are 
the Secretary's) we think that when renewed it 
can be carried on here with a better prospect of 



A Memoir. 



173 



settlement, than where the late attempt at a con- 
vention which resulted so disastrously and was 
conducted so strangely was had ' ; and what the 
Secretary thus wrote he repeated in conversation 
when we met, carefully making the transfer to 
Washington depend upon our advantage here, from 
'the presence of the Senate, — thus sliowing that the 
pretext put forth to wound Mr. Motley was an 
afterthought." 

Again we may fairly ask how the government 
came to send a despatch like that of September 25, 
1869, in which the views and expressions for which 
Mr. Motley's conversation had been criticised were 
/SO nearly reproduced, and with such emphasis that 
Mr. Motley says, in a letter to me, dated April 8, 
\1871, " It not only covers all the ground which I 
ever took, but goes far beyond it. No one has ever 
used stronger language to the British Government 

than is contained in that despatch It is very 

able and well worth your reading. Lord Clarendon 
called it to me ' Sumner's speech over again.' It 
was thought by the English cabinet to have ' out- 
Sumnered Sumner,' and now our Government, think- 
ing that every one in the United States had forgot- 
ten the despatch, makes believe that I was removed 
because my sayings and doings in England were too 
much influenced by Sumner ! " Mr. Motley goes 
on to speak of the report that an offer of his place 



Sect. XXI. 

1869-1870. 



The despatcli 
of September 
25, 1869. 



It " out- 

Sumnered 

Sumner." 



174 



John Lotlirop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



Mr. Bancroft 
Davis's let- 
ter. 



in England was made to Sumner " to get him out 
of the way of San Domingo." The facts concern- 
ing this offer are now sufficiently known to the 
public. 

Here I must dismiss Mr. Fish's letter to Mr. 
Moran, having, as I trust, sufficiently shown the 
spirit in which it was written and the strained inter- 
pretations and manifest overstatements by which it 
attempts to make out its case against Mr. Motley. I 
will not parade the two old women, whose untimely 
and unseemly introduction into the dress-circle of 
diplomacy was hardly to have been expected of the 
high official whose name is at the bottom of this 
paper. They prove nothing, they disprove nothing, 
they illustrate nothing — except that a statesman 
may forget himself. Neither will I do more than 
barely allude to the unfortunate reference to the 
death of Lord Clarendon as connected with Mr. 
Motley's removal, so placidly disposed of by a sen- 
tence or two in the London Times of January 24, 
1871. I think we may consider ourselves ready 
for the next witness. 

Mr. J. C. Bancroft Davis, Assistant Secretary of 
State under President Grant and Secretary Fish, 
wrote a letter to the New York Herald, under 
the date of January 4, 1878, since reprinted as a 
pamphlet and entitled " Mr. Sumner, the Alabama 
Claims and their Settlement." Mr. Sumner was 



A Memoir 



175 



never successfully attacked when living, — except 
with a blucbeon, — and his friends have more than 
sufficiently vindicated him since his deatli. But 
Mr. Motley comes in for his share of animadver- 
sion in Mr. Davis's letter. He has nothing of im- 
portance to add to Mr. Fish's criticisms on the 
interview with Lord. Clarendon. Only he brings 
out the head and front of Mr. Motley's offending by 
italicizing three very brief passages from his con- 
versation at this interview ; not discreetly, as it 
seems to me, for they will not bear the strain that 
is put upon them. These are the passages : — 

1. " hut that such measures must always he taken 
with a full view of the, qrave responsibilities as- 
sumed!^ 

2. " and as heing the fountain head of the disasters 
which had been caused to the American 'peo'pler 

3. " as the fruits of the ^proclamation!' 

1. It is true that nothing was said of resiJonsi- 
bility in Mr. Motley's instructions. But the idea 
was necessarily involved in their statements. For 
if, as Mr. Motley's instructions say, the right of a 
Power " to define its own relations," etc., when a 
civil conflict has arisen in another State depends 
on its (the conflict's) having " attained a sufficient 
complexity, magnitude, and completeness," inas- 
much as that Power has to judge whether it has or 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



Mr. Davis's 

letter. 



He criticises 
three passa- 
ges. 



" Responsi- 
bility." 



176 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 

Mr. Davis's 
letter. 



"Responsi- 
Ulity." 



" Fountain 
head of dis- 
asters." 



has not fulfilled these conditions, and is of course 
liable to judge wrong, every such act of judgment 
must be attended with grave responsibilities. The 
instructions say that " the necessity and propriety 
of the original concession of belligerency by Great 
Britain at the time it was made have been con-= 
tested and are not admitted." It follows beyond dis- 
pute that Great Britain may in this particular case 
have incurred grave responsibilities ; in fact, the 
whole negotiations implied as much. Perhaps Mr. 
Motley need not have used the word " responsibili- 
ties." But considering that the Government itself 
said in despatch No. 70, September 25, 1869, "The 
President does not deny, on the contrary he main- 
tains, that every sovereign power decides for itself 
on its responsibility whether or not it will, at a given 
time, accord the status of belligerency," etc., it was 
hardly worth while to use italics about Mr. Motley's 
employment of the same language as constituting 
a grave cause of offence. 

2. Mr. Motley's expression "as being the fountain 
head of the disasters,'' is a conversational paraphrase 
of the w^ords of his instructions, " as it shows the 
becjinnincr and the animus of that course of conduct 
which resulted so disastrously " which is not " in 
precise conformity" with his instructions, but is 
just such a variation as is to be expected when one 
is talking with another and using the words that 



A Memoir. 



177 



suggest themselves at the moment, just as the fa- 
miliar expression " hung up on a peg " probably 
suggested itself to Lord Clarendon. 

3. " the fruits of the proclamation " is so incon- 
siderable a variation on the text of the instructions 
" supplemented by acts causing direct damage " that 
the Secretary's hint about want of precise conform- 
ity seems hardly to have been called for. 

It is important to notice this point in the instruc- 
tions : With other Powers Mr. Motley was to take 
the position that the " recognition of the insurgents' 
state of war" was made "no ground of complaint " ; 
with Great Britain that the cause of grievance was 
''not so much" placed upon the issuance of this 
recognition as upon her conduct under, and subse- 
quent to, such recognition. 

There is no need of maintaining the exact fitness 
of every expression used by Mr. Motley. But any 
candid person who will carefully read the govern- 
ment's despatch No. 70, dated September 25, 1869, 
will see that a government holding such language 
could find nothing in Mr. Motley's expressions in a 
conversation held at his first official interview to 
visit with official capital punishment more than 
a year afterw^ards. If Mr. IVIotley had, as it was 
pretended, followed Sumner, Mr. Fish had "out- 
Sumnered " the Senator himself. 

Mr. Davis's pamphlet would hardly bQ complete 



Skct. XXI. 
1869-1870. 

Mr. Davis's 
letter. 



"Fruits of 
the procla- 
mation." 



178 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



Somebody's 
private let- 
ter. 



Its question- 
able value. 



without a mysterious letter from an unnamed 
writer, whether a faithless friend, a disguised ene- 
my, a secret emissary, or an injudicious alarmist, 
we have no means of judging for ourselves. The 
minister appears to have been watched by some- 
body in London, as he was in Vienna. This some= 
body wrote a private letter in which he expressed 
" fear and regret that Mr. Motley's bearing in his 
social intercourse was throwing obstacles in the 
way of a future settlement." The charge as men- 
tioned in Mr. Davis's letter is hardly entitled to 
our attention. Mr. Sumner considered it the work 
of an enemy, and the recollection of the M'Crackin 
letter might well have made the government cau- 
tious of hstening to complaints of such a character. 
This Somebody may have been one whom we 
should call Nobody. We cannot help remember- 
ing how well Oidis served Ochisseus of old, when 
he was puzzled to extricate himself from an em- 
barrassing position. Stat nominis lomhra is a poor 
showing for authority to support an attack on a 
public servant exposed to every form of open and 
insidious abuse from those who are prejudiced 
against his person or his birthplace, who are jeal- 
ous of his success, envious of his position, hostile 
to his politics, dwarfed by his reputation, or hate 
him by the divine right of idiosyncrasy, always 
liable, too, to questioning comment from well-mean- 



A Memoir. 



179 



ing friends who happen to be suspicious or sensi- 
tive in their political or social relations. 

The reported sayings of General Grant and of 
Mr. Fish to the correspondents who talked with 
them may be taken for what they are worth. They 
sound naturally enough to have come from the 
speakers who are said to have uttered them. 1 
quote the most important part of the Edinburgh 
letter, September 11, 1877, to the New York Herald. 
These are the words attributed to General Grant. 

"Mr. Motley was certainly a very able, very 
honest gentleman, fit to hold any of&cial position. 
But he knew long before he went out that he 
would have to go. When I was making these ap- 
pointments, Mr. Sumner came to me and asked me 
to appoint Mr. Motley as minister to the court of 
St. James. I told him I would, and did. Soon 
after Mr. Sumner made that violent speech about 
the Alabama claims, and the British government 
was greatly offended. Mr. Sumner was at the time 
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 
Mr. Motley had to be instructed. The instructions 
were prepared very carefully, and after Governor 
Fish and I had i^^one over them for the last time I 
wrote an addendum charging him that above all 
things he should handle the subject of the Ala- 
bama claims witli tlie greatest delicacy. Mr. Mot- 
ley, instead of obeying his explicit instructions, 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



Reputed 
sayings of 
General 
Grant and 
Mr. Fish. 



General 
Grant's 
allegred 
explanatioa 



180 



Jolin Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



General 
Grant's 
alleged 
explanation. 



Another 
alleged con- 
versation 
with Gen- 
eral Grant. 



deliberately fell in line with Sumner and thus 
added insult to the previous injury. As soon as I 
heard of it I went over to the State Department 
and told Governor Fish to dismiss Motley at once. 
I was very angry indeed, and I have been sorry 
many a time since that I did not stick to my first 
determination. Mr. Fish advised delay because of 
Sumner's position in the Senate and attitude' on 
the treaty question. We did not want to stir him 
up just then. We despatched a note of severe 
censure to Motley at once, and ordered him to ab- 
stain from any further connection with that ques- 
tion. We thereupon commenced negotiations with 
the British minister at Washington, and the result 
was the joint high commission and the Geneva 
award. I supposed Mr. Motley would be manly 
enough to resign after that snub, but he kept on 
till he was removed. Mr. Sumner promised me that 
he would vote for the treaty. But when it was 
before the Senate he did all he could to beat it." 

General Grant talked again at Cairo, in Egypt. 

" Grant then referred to the statement published 
at an interview with him in Scotland, and said the 
publication had some omissions and errors. He 
had no ill-will towards Mr. Motley, who, like other 
estimable men, made mistakes, and Motley made a 
mistake which made him an improper person to 
hold office under me." 



A Memoir. 



181 



" It is proper to say of me that I killed Motley, 
or that I made war upon Sumner for not support- 
ing the annexation of San Domingo. But if I dare 
to answer that I removed Motley from the highest 
considerations of duty as an executive ; if I pre- 
sume to say that he made a mistake in his office 
wliich made him no longer useful to the country ; 
if Fish has the temerity to hint that Sumner's 
temper was so unfortunate that business relations 
with him became impossible, we are slandering the 
dead." 

" Nothing? but Mortimer." Those who knew both 
men, — the Ex-President and the late Senator, — 
would agree, I do not doubt, that they would not be 
the most promising pair of human beings to make 
harmonious members of a political happy family. 
" Cedant arma togce,''^ the life-long sentiment of 
Sumner, in conflict with " Stand fast and stand 
sure," the well-known device of the clan of Grant, 
reminds one of the problem of an irresistible force 
in collision with an insuperable resistance. But 
the President says, — or is reported as saying, — " I 
may be blamed for my opposition to Mr. Sumner's 
tactics, but I was not guided so much by reason of 
his personal hatred of myself, as I was by a desire 
to protect our national interests in diplomatic af- 
fairs." 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 

General 
Grant's 
alleged con- 
versation. 



Political 
incompati- 
bilities. 



182 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 

The useless 
controversy 
(.Mr. Davis). 



Entered into 
by Mr. Fisli. 



Mijvty detSe. 



The death 
of Lord 
Clarendon. 



" It would be useless/' says Mr. Davis in his letter 
to the Herald, " to enter into a controversy whether 
the President may or may not have been influenced 
in the final determination of the moment for re- 
questing Motley's resignation by the feeling caused 
by Sumner's personal hostility and abuse of him- 
self" Unfortunately, this controversy liad heen 
entered into, and the idleness of suggesting any 
relation of cause and effect between Mr. Motley's 
dismissal and the irritation produced in the Presi- 
dent's mind by the rejection of the San Domingo 
treaty — which rejection was mainly due to Mot- 
ley's friend Sumner's opposition — strongly insisted 
upon in a letter signed by the Secretary of State. 
Too strongly, for here it was that he failed to re- 
member what was due to his office, to himself, and 
to the gentleman of whom he was writing ; if in- 
deed it was the Secretary's own hand which held 
the pen, and not another's. 

AVe might as well leave out the wrath of Achilles 
from the Iliad, as the anger of the President with 
Sumner from the story of Motley's dismissal The 
sad recital must always begin with Mrjviv aetSe He 
was, he is reported as saying, " very angry indeed " 
with Motley because he had fallen in line with 
Sumner. He couples them together in his conver- 
sation as closely as Chang and Eng were coupled. 
The death of Lord Clarendon would have covered 



A Memoir. 



183 



up the coincidence between the rejection of the San 
Domingo treaty and Mr. Motley's dismissal very 
neatly, but for the inexorable facts about its date, 
as revealed by the London Times. It betrays itself 
as an afterthought, and its failure as a defence 
reminds us too nearly of the trial in which Mr. 
Webster said suicide is confession. 

It is not strange that the spurs of the man who 
had so lately got out of the saddle should catch in 
the scholastic robe of the man on the floor of the 
Senate. But we should not have looked for any 
such antagonism between the Secretary of State and 
the Envoy to Great Britain. On the contrary, they 
must have had many sympatiiies, and it must have 
cost the Secretary pain, as lie said it did, to be 
forced to communicate with Mr. Moran instead of 
with Mr. Motley. 

He too was inquired of by one of the emissaries 
of the American Unholy Inquisition. His evidence 
is thus reported : — 

" The reason for Mr. Motley's removal was found 
in considerations of state. He misrepresented the 
government on the Alabama question, especially in 
the two speeches made by him before his arrival 
at his post." 

These must be the two speeches made to the 
American and the Liverpool chambers of commerce. 
If there is anything in these short addresses beyond 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



An after- 
thought 
betrays 
itself. 



Mr. Fish's 
explanation 
of Mr. Mot- 
ley's re- 
moval. 



Speeches at 
Liverpool. 



184 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 

Speeches at 
Liverpool. 



" Considera- 
tions of 
state." 



those civil generalities which the occasion called 
out, I have failed to find it. If it was in these that 
the reason of Mr. Motley's removal was to be looked 
for, it is singular that they are not mentioned in 
the Secretary's letter to Mr. Moran, or by Mr. Davis 
in his letter to the New York Herald. They must 
have been as unsuccessful as myself in the search 
after anything in these speeches which could be 
construed into misinterpretation of the Government 
on the Alabama question. 

AVe may much more readily accept " considera- 
tions of state " as a reason for Mr. Motley's removal. 
Considerations of state have never yet failed the axe 
or the bowstring when a reason for the use of those 
convenient implements was wanted, and they are 
quite equ.al to every emergency which can arise in 
a republican autocracy. But for the very reason 
that a minister is absolutely in the power of his 
o-overnment, the manner in wdiich that power is 
used is always open to the scrutiny, and, if it has 
been misused, to the condemnation, of a tribunal 
higher than itself ; a court that never goes out of 
office, and which no personal feelings, no lapse of 
time, can silence. 

The ostensible grounds on which Mr. Motley was 
recalled are plainly insufficient to account for the 
action of the Government. If it was in great 
measure a manifestation of personal feeling on the 



A Memoir 



185 



j^art of the high officials by whom and through 
whom the act was accomplished, it was a wrong 
which can never be repaired and never sufficiently 
regretted. 

Stung by the slanderous report of an anonymous 
eavesdropper to whom the government of the day 
was not ashamed to listen, he had quitted Vienna, 
too hastily, it may be, but wounded, indignant, 
feeling that he had been unworthily treated. The 
sudden recall from London, on no pretext whatever 
but an obsolete and overstated incident which had 
ceased to have any importance, was under these 
circumstances a deadly blow. It fell upon "the 
new-healed wound of malice," and though he would 
not own it, and bore up against it, it was a shock 
from which he never fully recovered. 

" I hope I am one of those," he writes to me from 
the Hague, in 1872, "who 'fortune's buffets and 
rewards can take with equal thanks.' I am quite 
aware that I have had far more than I deserve of 
political honors, and they might have had my post 
as a voluntary gift on my part had they remembered 
that I was an honorable man, and not treated me 
as a detected criminal deserves to be dealt with." 

Mr. Sumner naturally felt very deeply what he 
considered the great wrong done to his friend. He 
says : — 

"How little Mr. Motley merited anything but 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



Effect of his 
recall upon 
Mr, Motley. 



Mr. Sum- 
ner's feeling 
on the sub- 
ject. 



186 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 

Mr. Sum- 
ner's vindi- 
cation of Mr. 
Motley. 



Testimony of 
the London 
press. 



respect and courtesy from the Secretary is attested 
by all who know his eminent position in London, 
and the service he rendered to his country. Already 
the London press, usually slow to praise Americans 
when strenuous for their country, has furnished its 
voluntary testimony. The Daily News of August 
16, 1870, spoke of the insulted minister in these 
terms : — 

" ' We are violating no confidence in saying that 
all the hopes of Mr. Motley's official residence in 
England have been amply fulfilled, and that the 
announcement of his unexpected and unexplained 
recall was received with extreme astonishment and 
unfeigned regret. The vacancy he leaves cannot 
possibly be filled by a minister more sensitive to 
the honor of his government, more attentive to the 
interests of his country, and more capable of unit- 
ing the most vigorous performance of his public 
duties with the high-bred courtesy and conciliatory 
tact and temper that make those duties easy and 
successful. Mr. Motley's successor will find his 
mission wonderfully facilitated by the firmness and 
discretion that have presided over the conduct of 
American affairs in this country during too brief a 
term, too suddenly and unaccountably concluded.' " 

No man can escape being found fault with when 
it is necessary to make out a case against him. A 
diplomatist is watched by the sharpest eyes and 



A Memoir. 



187 



commented on by the most merciless tongues. The 
best and wisest has his defects, and sometimes they 
would seem to be very grave ones if brought up 
against him in the form of accusation. Take these 
two portraits, for instance, as drawn by John Quincy 
Adams. The first is that of Stratford Canning, af- 
terwards Lord Stratford de Eedcliffe : — 

" He is to depart to-morrow. I shall probably 
see him no more. He is a proud, high-tempered 
Englishman, of good but not extraordinary parts ; 
stubborn and punctilious, with a disposition to be 
overbearing, which I have often been compelled to 
check in its own way. He is, of all the foreign 
ministers with whom I have had occasion to treat, 
the man who has most severely tried my temper. 
Yet he has been long in the diplomatic career, 
and treated with governments of the most opposite 
characters. He has, however, a great respect for 
his word, and there is nothing false about him. 
This is an excellent quality for a negotiator. Mr. 
Canning is a man of forms, studious of courtesy, 
and tenacious of private morals. As a diplomatic 
man, his great want is suppleness, and his great 
virtue is sincerity.'* 

The second portrait is that of the French minis- 
ter, Hyde de Neuville : — 

"No foreign minister who ever resided here has 
been so universally esteemed and beloved, nor have 



Sect. XXI. 
1869 - 1870. 



All men 
have their 
defects. 



Two charac- 
ters, drawn 
by John 
Quincy 
Adama. 



Stratford 
Canning. 



188 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



Hyde de 

Is'euville. 



Recall of a 
foreign 
minister an 
exercise of 
'despotic 
power. 



I ever been in political relations with any foreign 
statesman of whose moral qualities I have formed 
so good an opinion, with the exception of Count 
Eomanzoff. He has not sufficient command of his 
temper, is quick, irritable, sometimes punctilious, 
occasionally indiscreet in his discourse, and tainted 
with Eoyalist and Bourbon prejudices. But he has 
strong sentiments of honor, justice, truth, and even 
liberty. His flurries of temper pass off as quickly 
as they rise. He is neither profound nor sublime 
nor brilliant ; but a man of strong and good feel- 
ings, with the experience of many vicissitudes of 
fortune, a good but common understanding, and 
good intentions biassed by party feelings, occasional 
interests, and personal affections." 

It means very little to say that a man has some 
human imperfections, or that a public servant 
might have done some things better. But when 
a questionable cause is to be justified the victim's 
excellences are looked at with the eyes of Brob- 
dingnag and his failings with those of Liliput. 

The recall of a foreign minister for alleged mis- 
conduct in office is a kind of capital punishment. 
It is the nearest approach to the Sultan's bowstring 
which is permitted to the chief magistrate of our 
Eepublic. A general can do nothing under martial 
law more peremptory than a President can do with 



A Memoir. 



189 



regard to the public functionary whom he has ap- 
pointed with the advice and consent of the Senate, 
but whom he can officially degrade and disgrace at 
his own pleasure for insufficient cause or for none at 
all. Like the centurion of Scripture, he says Go, 
and he goeth. The Nation's Eepresentative is less 
secure in his tenure of office than his own servant, 
to whom he must give warning of his impending 
dismissal. 

" A breath unmakes lf,im as a breath has made." 

The chief magistrate's responsibility to duty, to 
the fellow-citizen at his mercy, to his countrymen, 
to mankind, is in proportion to his power. His 
prime minister, the agent of his edicts, should feel 
bound to withstand him if he seeks to gratify a 
personal feeling under the plea of public policy, 
unless the minister, like the slaves of the harem, 
is to find his qualification for office in leaving his 
manhood behind him. 

The two successive administrations, which treated 
Mr. Motley in a manner unworthy of their jDosition 
and cruel, if not fatal to him, have been heard, 
directly or through their advocates. I have at- 
tempted to show that the defence set up for their 
action is anything but satisfactory. A later gen- 
eration will sit in judgment upon the evidence 
more calmly than our own. It is not for a friend. 



Sect. XXL 
1869-1870. 



Responsi- 
bility in 
proportion 
to power. 



190 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXI. 
1869-1870. 



like the writer, to anticipate its decision, but un- 
less the reasons alleged to justify his treatment, 
and which have so much the air of afterthoughts, 
shall seem stronger to that future tribunal than 
they do to him, the verdict will be that Mr. Motley 
was twice sacrificed to personal feelings w^hich 
should never have been cherished by the heads 
of the government, and should never have been 
countenanced by their chief advisers. _^ 



A Memoir. 



191 



XXII. 

Life of John of Barneveld. — Criticisms. — Groen 
van Prinsterer. (1874.) 

The full title of Mr. Motley's next and last work 
is *' The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advo- 
cate of Holland ; with a view of the primary causes 
and movements of the Thirty Years' War." 

In point of fact this work is a history rather 
than a biography. It is an interlude, a pause be- 
tween the acts which were to fill out the complete 
plan of the " Eighty Years' Tragedy," and of which 
the last act, the Thirty Years' War, remains unwrit- 
ten. The Life of Barneveld was received as a 
fitting and worthy continuation of the series of 
intellectual labor in which he was enojafijed. I will 
quote but two general expressions of approval from 
the two best known British critical Eeviews. In 
connection with his previous works, it forms, says 
the London Quarterly, " a fine and continuous story, 
of which the writer and the nation celebrated by 
him have equal reason to be proud; a narrative 
which will remain a prominent ornament of Ameri- 
can genius, while it has permanently enriched Eng- 



Sect. XXIL 

1874. 

Life of Jolia 
of Barne- 
veld. 



Criticisms. 
The London 
Quarterly. 



192 



John LotJiTop Motley. 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 

The Edin- 
burgh Ee- 
yiew. 



M. Groen 
Tan Prins- 
terer. 



Key to this 
biography. 



lish literature on this as well as on the other side 
of the Atlantic." 

The Edinburgh Eeview speaks no less warmly : 
" We can hardly give too much appreciation to that 
subtile alchemy of the brain which has enabled 
him to produce out of dull, crabbed, and often 
illegible state papers, the vivid, graphic, and spark- 
ling narrative which he has sjiven to the world." 

In a literary point of view, M. Groen van Prins- 
terer, whose elaborate work has been already re- 
ferred to, speaks of it as perhaps the most classi- 
cal of Motley's productions, but it is upon this 
work that the force of his own and other Dutch 
criticisms has been chiefly expended. 

The key to this biographical history or histori- 
cal biography may be found in a few sentences 
from its opening chapter. 

" There have been few men at any period whose 
lives have been more closely identical than his 
[Barneveld's] with a national history. There have 
been few great men in any history whose names 
have become less familiar to the world, and lived 
less in the mouths of posterity. Yet there can 
be no doubt that if William the Silent was the 
founder of the independence of the United Prov- 
inces, Barneveld was the founder of the Common- 
wealth itself. .... 

" Had that country of which he was so long the 



A Memoir. 



193 



first citizen maintained until our own day the 
same proportional position among tlie empires of 
Christendom as it held in the seventeenth century, 
the name of John of Barneveld would have per- 
haps been as familiar to all men as it is at this 
moment to nearly every inhabitant of the Nether- 
lands. Even now political passion is almost as 
ready to flame forth, either in ardent affection or 
enthusiastic hatred, as if two centuries and a half 
had not elapsed since his death. His name is so 
typical of a party, a polity, and a faith, so indeli- 
bly associated with a great historical cataclysm as 
to render it difficult even for the grave, the conscien- 
tious, the learned, the patriotic of his own compa- 
triots to speak of him with absolute impartiality. 

" A foreigner who loves and admires all that is 
great and noble in the history of that famous re- 
public, and can have no hereditary bias as to its 
ecclesiastical or political theories, may at least at- 
tempt the task with comparative coldness, although 
conscious of inability to do thorough justice to a 
most complex subject." 

With all Mr. Motley's efforts to be impartial, to 
which even his sternest critics bear witness, he 
could not help becoming a partisan of the cause 
which for him was that of religious liberty and 
progress, as against the accepted formula of an old 



Sect. XXII. 
1874. 



Jolm of 
Barneveld. 



Difficulty of 
impartiality. 



Mr. Motley 
a partisan 
of religious 
liberty and 
progress. 



194 



John Lothroj) Motley. 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 

John of 
Barneveld. 



Old contro- 
versies re- 
newed. 



Uemon- 
strants and 
Contra-E,e- 
monstrants. 



ecclesiastical organi2iation. For the quarrel which 
came near being a civil war, which convulsed the 
state, and cost Barneveld his head, had its origin 
in a difterence on certain points, and more espe- 
cially on a single point, of religious doctrine. 

As a great river may be traced back until its 
fountain-head is found in a thread of water stream- 
ing from a cleft in the rocks, so a great national 
movement may sometimes be followed until its 
starting-point is found in the cell of a monk or 
the studies of a pair of wrangling professors. 

The religious quarrel of the Dutchmen in the 
seventeenth century reminds us in some points of 
the strife between two parties in our own New 
England, sometimes arraying the " church " on one 
side against the "parish," or the geneij^l body of 
worshippers, on the other. The portraits of Goma- 
rus, the great orthodox champion, and Arminius, 
the head and front of the " liberal theology " of his 
day, as given in the little old quarto of Meursius, 
recall two ministerial types of countenance famil- 
iar to those who remember the earlier years of our 
century. 

Under the name of " Eemonstrants" and " Contra- 
Eemonstrants," — Arminians and old-fashioned Cal- 
vinists, as we should say, — the adherents of the 
two Ley den Professors disputed the right to the 
possession of the churches, and the claim to be 



A Memoir. 



195 



considered as representing the national religion. 
Of the seven United Provinces two, Holland and 
Utrecht, were prevailingly Arminian, and the other 
five Calvinistic. Barneveld, who, under the title 
of Advocate, represented the Province of Holland, 
the most important of them all, claimed for each 
Province a right to determine its own State re- 
ligion. • Maurice the Stadholder, son of William 
the Silent, the military chief of the EepubUc, 
claimed the right for the States-General. Cujus 
regio ejus religio was then the accepted public doc- 
trine of Protestant nations. Thus the Provincial 
and the General governments were brought into 
conflict by their creeds, and the question whether 
the Eepublic was a Confederation or a Nation, the 
same question which has been practically raised, 
and for the time at least settled, in our own Ee- 
public, was in some way to be decided. After 
various disturbances and acts of violence by both 
parties, Maurice, representing the States-General, 
pronounced for the Calvinists or Contra-Eemon- 
strants, and took possession of one of the great 
Churches, as an assertion of his authority. Barne- 
veld, representing the Arminian, or Eemonstrant 
Provinces, levied a body of mercenary soldiers in 
several of the cities. These were disbanded by 
Maurice, and afterwards by an act of the States- 
General. Barneveld was apprehended, imprisoned. 



Sect. XXII. 
187-1. 



Life of John 
of Barne- 
veld. 



Conflict of 
authority. 



196 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXII. 
1874. 

Jolm of 
Barneveld. 



Grotius. 



The religious 
quarrel. 



and executed, after an examination which was in no 
proper sense a trial. Grrotins, who was on the Ar- 
minian side and involved in the inculpated proceed- 
ings, was also arrested and imprisoned. His es- 
cape, by a stratagem successfully repeated by a 
^lave in our own times, may challenge comparison 
for its romantic interest with any chapter of fictiom 
How his wife packed him into the chest supposed 
to contain the folios of the great oriental scholar 
Erpenius, how the soldiers wondered at its weight, 
and questioned whether it did not hold an Armin- 
ian, how the servant-maid, Elsje van Houwening, 
quickwitted as Morgiana of the "Forty Thieves," 
parried their questions and convoyed her master 
safely to the friendly place of refuge, — all this 
must be read in the vivid narrative of the author. 

The questions involved were political, local, per- 
sonal, and above all religious. Here is the picture 
which Motley draws of the religious quarrel as it 
divided the people : — 

" In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, me- 
chanics' back-parlors, on board herring-smacks, 
cajial-boats, and East Indiamen ; in shops, count- 
ing-rooms, farm-yards, guard-rooms, alehouses ; on 
the exchange, in the tennis-court, on the mall; 
at banquets, at burials, christenings, or bridals ; 
wherever and whenever human creatures met 
each other, there was ever to be found the fierce 



A Memoir. 



197 



wrangle of Eemonstrant and Contra-Kemonstrant, 
the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the 
pelting of hostile texts. The blacksmith's iron 
cooled on the anvil, the tinker drojDped a kettle 
half mended, the broker left a bargain unclinched, 
the Scheveningen fisherman in his wooden shoes 
forgot the cracks in his pinkie, while each paused 
to hold high converse with friend or foe on fate, 
free-will, or absolute foreknowledge ; losing himself 
in wandering mazes whence there was no issue. 
Province against province, city against city, family 
against family ; it was one vast scene of bickering, 
denunciation, heart-burnings, mutual excommunica- 
tion and hatred." 

The religious grounds of the quarrel which set 
these seventeenth-century Dutchmen to cutting 
each other's throats were to be looked for in the 
" Five Points " of the Arminians as arrayed against 
the " Seven Points " of the Gomarites, or Contra- 
Eemonstrants. The most important of the differ- 
ences which were to be settled by fratricide seem 
to have been these : — 

According to the Five Points, " God has from 
eternity resolved to choose to eternal life those who 
through his grace believe in Jesus Christ," etc. Ac- 
cording to the Seven Points, " God in his election 
has not looked at the belief and the repentance of 
the elect," etc. According to the Five Points, all 



Sect. XXII. 
1874. 



John of 
Barneveld. 



Grounds of 
the religious 
quarrel. 



The Five 
Points. 



198 



John LotJirop Motley. 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 

John of 
Barueveld. 



The Seven 
Points. 



Connection' 
between re- 
ligion and 
politics. 



good deeds must be ascribed to God's grace in 
Christ, but it does not work irresistibly. The lan- 
guage of the Seven Points implies that the elect 
cannot resist God's eternal and unchangeable de- 
sign to give them faith and steadfastness, and that 
they can never wholly and for always lose the true 
faith. The language of the Five Points is unset- 
tled as to the last proposition, but it was afterwards 
maintained by the Eemonstrant party that a true 
believer could, through his own fault, fall away 
from God and lose faith. 

It must be remembered that these religious ques- 
tions had an immediate connection with politics. In- 
dependently of the conflict of jurisdiction, in which 
they involved the parties to the two different creeds, 
it was believed or pretended that the new doctrines 
of the Eemonstrants led towards Pwomanism, and 
were allied with designs which threatened the in- 
dependence of the country. "There are two fac- 
tions in the land," said Maurice, " that of Orange 
and that of Spain, and tlie two chiefs of the Span- 
ish faction are those political and priestly Armin- 
ians, Uytenbogaert and Oldenbarneveld." 

The heads of the two religious and political 
parties were in such hereditary, long-continued, 
and intimate relations up to the time when one 
signed the other's death-warrant, that it was im- 
possible to write the life of one without also \\T['it- 



A Memoir. 



199 



ing that of the other. For his biographer John of 
Barneveld is the true patriot, the martyr, whose 
cause was that of religious and jjolitical freedom. 
For him Maurice is the ambitious soldier who 
hated his political rival, and never rested until 
this rival was brought to the scaffold. 

The questions which agitated men's minds two 
centuries and a half ago are not dead yet in the 
country where they produced such estrangement, 
violence, and Avrong. No stranger could take them 
Tip without encountering hostile criticism from one 
party or the other. It may be and has been con- 
ceded that Mr. Motley writes as a partisan, — a par- 
tisan of freedom in politics and religion, as he un- 
derstands freedom. This secures him the antagonism 
of one class of critics. But these critics are them- 
selves partisans, and themselves open to the cross- 
fire of their antagonists. M. Groen van Prinsterer, 
" the learned and distinguished " Editor of the 
Archives et Correspondance of the Orange and 
Nassau family, published a considerable volume, 
before referred to, in which many of Motley's views 
are strongly controverted. But he himself is far 
from being in accord with " that eminent scholar," 
M. Bakhuyzen van den Brink, whose name, he 
says, is celebrated enough to need no comment, or 
with M. Fruin, of whose impartiality and erudition 
he himself speaks in the strongest terms. The 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 



John of 
Barneveld. 



M. Groen 
van Prins- 
teror's work 



200 



John Lotlirop Motley. 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 



John of 
Barneveld. 



M. Groen 
van Prins- 
terer's 
ground of 
departure. 



ground upon which he is attacked is thus stated in 
his own words : — 

"People have often pretended to find in my 
writings the deplorable influence of an extreme 
Calvinism. The Puritans of the seventeenth cen- 
tury are ray fellow-religionists. I am a sectarian 
and not an historian." 

It is plain enough to any impartial reader that 
there are at least plausible grounds for this accusa- 
tion against Mr. Motley's critic. And on a careful 
examination of the formidable volume, it becomes 
obvious that Mr. Motley has presented a view of the 
events and the personages of the stormy epoch 
with which he is dealing, which leaves a battle- 
ground yet to be fought over by those who come 
after him. The dispute is not and cannot be 
settled. 

The end of all religious discussion has come 
when one of the parties claims that it is thinking 
or acting under immediate Divine guidance. " It is 
God's affair, and his honor is touched," says Wil- 
liam Lewis to Prince Maurice. Mr. Motley's critic is 
not less confident in claiming the Almighty as on 
the side of his own views. Let him state his own 
ground of departure : — 

" To show the difference, let me rather say the 
contrast, between the point of view of Mr. Motley 
and my own, between the Unitarian and the Evan- 



A Memoir. 



201 



gelical belief. " I am issue of Calvin, child of the 
Awakening (re veil). Faithful to the device of the 
Eeformers : Justification by faith alone, and the 
Word of God endures eternally. I consider history 
from the point of view of Merle dAubigne, Chal- 
mers, Guizot. I desire to be disciple and witness of 
our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ." 

He is therefore of necessity antagonistic to a 
writer whom he describes in such words as these : — 

" Mr. Motley is literal and rationalist. 

" He becomes, in attacking the principle of the 
Reformation, the passionate opponent of the Puri- 
tans and of Maurice, the ardent apologist of Barne- 
velt and the Arniinians. 

" It is understood, and he makes no mystery of 
it, that he inclines towards the vague and unde- 
cided doctrine of the Unitarians." 

What M. Groen's idea of Unitarians is may be 
gathered from the statement about them which he 
gets from a letter of De Tocqueville. 

" They are pure deists ; they talk about the Bible, 
because they do not wish to shock too severely 
public opinion, which is prevailingly Christian. 
They have a service on Sundays, I have been there. 
At it they read verses from Dryden or other Eng- 
lish poets on the existence of God and the immor- 
tality of the soul. They deliver a discourse on 
some point of morality, and all is said." 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 



John of 
Barneveld. 



The Calvin- 

ist. 



The Unita- 
rian, accord- 
to his 
opponent. 



202 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 

Jolin of 
Barneveld. 



Protests 

against 

Calvinism. 



Pei-plexities 
of Protest- 
antism. 



In point of fact the wave of protest which 
stormed the dikes of Dutch orthodoxy in the sev- 
enteenth century stole gently through the bars of 
New England puritanism in the eighteenth. 

" Though the large number/' says Mr. Bancroft, 
" still acknowledged the fixedness of the divine de- 
crees, and the resistless certainty from all eternity 
of election and of reprobation, there were not want- 
ing, even among the clergy, some who had modi- 
fied the sternness of the ancient doctrine by 
making the self-direction of the active powers of 
man with freedom of inquiry and private judgment 
the central idea of a protest against Calvinism." 

Protestantism, cut loose from an infallible church, 
and drifting with currents it cannot resist, wakes 
up once or oftener in every century, to find itself 
in a new locality. Then it rubs its eyes and won- 
ders whether it has found its harbor or only lost 
its anchor. There is no end to its disputes, for it 
has nothing but a fallible vote as authority for its 
oracles, and these appeal only to fallible inter- 
preters. 

It is as hard to contend in argument against "the 
oligarchy of heaven," as Motley calls the Calvin- 
istic party, as it was formerly to strive with them 
in arms. 

To this " aristocracy of God's elect " belonged the 
party which framed the declaration of the Synod 



A Memoir. 



203 



of Dort ; the party which tinder the forms of jus- 
tice shed the blood of the great statesman who had 
served his country so long and so well. To this 
chosen body belonged the late venerable and truly 
excellent as well as learned M. Groen van Prin- 
sterer, and he exercised the usual right of exam- 
ining in the light of his privileged position the 
views of a "liberal" and "rationalist" writer who 
goes to meeting on Sunday to hear verses from 
Dryden. This does not diminish his claim for a 
fair reading of the " intimate correspondence," 
which he considers Mr. Motley has not duly taken 
into account, and of the other letters to be found 
printed in his somewhat disjointed and fragment- 
ary volume. 

This " intimate correspondence " shows Maurice 
the Stadholder indifferent and lax in internal 
administration and as being constantly advised 
and urged by his relative Count William of Nassau. 
This need of constant urging extends to religious 
as well as other matters, and is inconsistent with 
M. Groen van Prinsterer's assertion that the ques- 
tion was for Maurice above all religious, and for 
Barneveld above all political. Whether its nega- 
tive evidence can be considered as neutralizing 
that which is adduced by Mr. Motley to show the 
Stadholder's hatred of the Advocate may be left 
to the reader who has just risen from the account 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 

John of 
Barneveld. 



The "inti- 
mate corre- 
spondence." 



204 



John Lotlirop Motley, 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 

John of 
Barneveld. 



Record of 

Barneveld'3 

execution. 



Authors are 
autobiogra- 
pbers. 



of the mock trial and the swift execution of the 
great and venerable statesman. The formal entry 
on the Eecord upon the day of his "judicial mur- 
der " is singularly solemn and impressive : — 

"Monday, 13th May, 1619. To-day was exe- 
cuted with the sword here in the Hague, on a scaf- 
fold thereto erected in the Binnenhof before the 
steps of the great hall, Mr. John of Barneveld, in 
his life Knight, Lord of Berkel, Eodenrys, etc, 
Advocate of Holland and West Friesland, for rea- 
sons expressed in the sentence and otherwise, with 
confiscation of his property, after he had served the 
state thirty-three years two months and five days, 
since 8th March, 1586 ; a man of great activity, 
business, memory, and wisdom — yea, extraordinary 
in every respect. He that stands let him see that 
he does not fall." 

Maurice gave an account of the execution of 
Barneveld to Count William Lewis on the same 
day in a note " painfully brief and dry." 

Most authors write their own biography con- 
sciously or unconsciously. We have seen Mr. Mot- 
ley portraying much of himself, his course of life and 
his future, as he would have had it, in his first story. 
In this, his last work, it is impossible not to read 
much of his own external and internal personal 
history told under other names and with different 



A Memoir. 



205 



accessories. The parallelism often accidentally or 
intentionally passes into divergence. He would 
not have had it too close if he could, but there are 
various passages in which it is plain enough that he 
is telling his own story. 

Mr. Motley was a diplomatist, and he writes of 
other diplomatists, and one in particular, with most 
significant detail. It need not be supposed that he 
intends the " arch intriguer " Aerssens to stand 
for himself, or that he would have endured being 
thought to identify himself with the man of whose 
"almost devilish acts" he speaks so freely. But 
the sagacious reader — and he need not be very 
sharp-sighted — will very certainly see something 
more than a mere historical significance in some of 
the passages which I shall cite for him to reflect upon. 
Mr. Motley's standard of an ambassador's accomplish- 
ments may be judged from the following passage. 

" That those ministers [those of the Eepublic] 
were second to the representatives of no other Eu- 
ropean state in capacity and accomplishment was a 
fact well known to all who had dealings with them, 
for the states required in their diplomatic represent- 
atives knowledge of history and international law, 
modern languages, and the classics, as well as fa- 
miliarity with political customs and social courte- 
sies ; the breeding of gentlemen, in short; and the 
accomplishments of scholars." 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 



John of 
Barneveld. 



Self-portrait- 
ure. 



Accomplish- 
ments of 
Dutch 
Ministers. 



206 



Jo] in Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 

John of 
Barneveld. 



Francis 
Aerssens. 



The story of the troubles of Aerssens, the Am- 
bassador of the United Provinces at Paris, must be 
given at some length, and will repay careful reading. 

" Francis Aerssens .... continued to be the 
Dutch ambassador after the murder of Henry lY. 
. . . . He was beyond doubt one of the ablest diplo- 
matists in Europe. Versed in many languages, a 
classical student, familiar w^ith history and inter- 
national law, a man of the world and familiar with 
its usages, accustomed to associate with dignity and 
tact on friendliest terms with sovereigns, eminent 
statesmen, and men of letters ; endowed with a facile 
tongue, a fluent pen, and an eye and ear of singu- 
lar acuteness and delicacy ; distinguished for un- 
flagging industry and singular aptitude for secret 
and intricate affairs ; — he had by the exercise of 
these various qualities during a period of nearly 
twenty years at the court of Henry the Great been 
able to render inestimable services to the Eepublic 
which he represented. 

" He had enjoyed the intimacy and even the con- 
fidence of Henry IV., so far as any man could be 
said to possess that monarch's confidence, and his 
friendly relations and familiar access to the king 
gave him political advantages superior to those of 
any of his colleagues at the same court. 

" Acting entirely and faithfully according to the 



A Memoir. 



207 



instructions of the Advocate of Holland, lie always 
gratefully and copiously acknowledged the privilege 
of being guided and sustained in the difficult paths 
he had to traverse by so powerful and active an 
intellect. I have seldom alluded in terms to the 
instructions and despatches of the chief, but every 
position, negotiation, and opinion of the envoy — 
and the reader has seen many of them — is per- 
vaded by their spirit 

" It had become a question whether he was to re- 
main at his post or return. It was doubtful whether 
he wished to be relieved of his embassv or not. The 
States of Holland voted ' to leave it to his candid 
opinion if in his free conscience he thinks he can 
serve the pubhc any longer. If yes, he may keep 
his office one year more. If no, he may take leave 
and come home.' 

"Surely the States, under the guidance of the 
Advocate, had thus acted with consummate courtesy 
towards a diplomatist whose position, from no ap- 
parent fault of his own, but by the force of circum- 
stances — and rather to his credit than otherwise 
— was gravely compromised." 

The Queen, Mary de' Medici, had a talk with 
him, got angry, " became very red in the face," and 
wanted to be rid of him. 

" Nor was the Envoy at first desirous of remain- 
ing Nevertheless, he yielded reluctantly to 



Sect. XXII. 
1874. 



John of 
Barneveld. 



Aerssens 

courteously 

treated. 



208 



John LotUrop Motley. 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 

John of 
Barneveld. 



Aerssens 
intrigued 
against. 



Attempt to 
drive him 
from his post 



Barneveld's request that he should, for the time at 
least, remain at his post. Later on, as the intrigues 
against him began to unfold themselves, and his 
faithful services were made use of at home to 
blacken his character and procure his removal, he 
refused to resign, as to do so would be to play into 
the hands of his enemies, and, by inference at least, 
to accuse himself of infidelity to his trust." .... 

" It is no wonder that the Ambassador was galled 
to the quick by the outrage which those concerned 
in the government were seeking to put upon him. 
How could an honest man fail to be overwhelmed 
with rage and anguish at being dishonored before 
the world by his masters for scrupulously doing his 
duty, and for maintaining the rights and dignity of 
his own country ? He knew that the charges were 
but pretexts, that the motives of his enemies were 
as base as the intrigues themselves, but he also 
knew that the world usually sides with the govern- 
ment against the individual, and that a man's repu- 
tation is rarely strong enough to maintain itself 
unsullied in a foreign land when his own govern- 
ment stretches forth its hand, not to shield, but to 
stab him 

" ' I know,' he said, ' that this plot has been 
woven partly in Holland and partly here by good 
correspondence, in order to drive me from my post 
with disreputation 



A Memoir. 



209 



" ' But as I have discovered this accurately, I have 
resolved to offer to my masters tlie continuance of 
my very humble service for such time and under 
such conditions as they may think good to pre- 
scribe. I prefer forcing my natural and private 
inclinations to giving an opportunity for the min- 
isters of this kingdom to discredit us, and to my 
enemies to succeed in injuring me, and by fraud 

and malice to force me from my post I am 

truly sorry, being ready to retire, wishing to have 
an honorable testimony in recompense of my labors, 
that one is in such hurry to take advantage of my 

fall What envoy will ever dare to speak 

with vigor if he is not sustained by the government 
at home ? . . . . My enemies have misrepresented 
my actions, and my language as passionate, exag- 
gerated, mischievous, but I have no passion except 
for the service of my superiors ' 

" Barneveld, from well-considered motives of pub- 
lic policy, was favoring his honorable recall. But 
he allowed a decorous interval of more than three 
years to elapse in which to terminate his affairs, 
and to take a deliberate departure from that French 
embassy to which the Advocate had originally pro- 
moted him, and in which there had been so many 
years of mutual benefit and confidence between the 
two statesmen. He used no underhand means. 
He did not abuse the power of the States-General 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 



John of 
Barneveld. 



Aerssens 
intends to 
remain. 



Respectfully 
treated by 
his govern- 
ment. 



210 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXII. 

1874. 



An implied 
contrast. 



Influence of 
individual 
humors and 
passions. 



which he wielded to cast him suddenly and brutally 
from the distinguished post which he occupied, and 
so to attempt to dishonor him before the world. 
Nothing could be more respectful and conciliatory 
than the attitude of the government from first to 
last towards this distinguished functionary. The 
Eepublic respected itself too much to deal with 
honorable agents whose services it felt obliged to 
dispense with as with vulgar malefactors who had 

been detected in crime 

"This work aims at being a political study. I 
would attempt to exemplify the influence of indi- 
vidual humors and passions — some of them among 
the highest and others certainly the basest that 
agitate humanity — upon the march of great events, 
upon general historical results at certain epochs, and 
upon the destiny of eminent personages." 
Here are two suggestive portraits : — 
" The Advocate, while acting only in the name 
of a slender confederacy, was in truth, so long as 
he held his place, the prime minister of European 
Protestantism. There was none other to rival him, 
few to comprehend him, fewer still to sustain him. 
As Prince Maurice was at that time the great sol- 
dier of Protestantism, without clearly scanning the 
grandeur of the field in which he was a chief actor, 
or foreseeing the vastness of its future, so the Ad- 
vocate was its statesman and its prophet. Could 



A Memoir. 



211 



the two have worked together as harmoniously as 
they had done at an earlier day, it would have been 
a blessing for the common weal of Europe. But, 
alas ! the evil genius of jealousy, which so often 
forbids cordial relations between soldier and states- 
man, already stood shrouded in the distance, darkly 
menacing the strenuous patriot, who was wearing 
his life out in exertions for what he deemed the 

true cause of progress and humanity 

" All history shows that the brilliant soldier of a 
republic is apt to have the advantage, in a struggle 
for popular affection and popular applause, over the 

statesman, however consummate The great 

battles and sieges of the Prince had been on a 
world's theatre, had enchained the attention of 
Christendom, and on their issue had frequently 
depended, or seemed to depend, the very existence 
of the nation. The labors of the statesman, on the 
contrary, had been comparatively secret. His noble 
orations and arguments had been spoken with closed 
doors to assemblies of colleagues — rather envoys 
than senators — . . . . while his vast labors in direct- 
ing both the internal administration and especially 
the foreign affairs of the commonwealth had been 
by their very nature as secret as they were perpet- 
ual and enormous." 

The reader of the life of Barneveld must judge 



Sect. XXII. 
1874. 



The soldier 
and the 
statesman. 



212 



John Lotlirop Motley. 



Sect.XXII. 

1874. 

John of 
Bameveld. 



for himself whether in these and similar passages 
the historian was thinking solely of Maurice, the 
great military leader, of Barneveld, the great states- 
man, and of Aerssens, the recalled ambassador. He 
will certainly find that there were " burning ques- 
tions" for ministers to handle then as now, and 
recognize in " that visible atmosphere of power the 
poison of which it is so difficult to resist " a respira- 
tory medium as well known to the nineteenth as 
to the seventeenth century. 



A Memoir, 



213 



XXIII. 

Death of Mrs. Motley. — Last Visit to America. — Ill- 
ness and Death. — Lady Harcourfs Communica- 
tion. (187 4 -1877.) 

On the last day of 1874 the beloved wife, whose 
health had for some years been failing, was taken 
from him by death. She had been the pride of his 
happier years, the stay and solace of those which 
had so tried his sensitive spirit. The blow found 
him already weakened by mental suffering and 
bodily infirmity, and he never recovered from it. 
Mr. Motley's last visit to America was in the sum- 
mer and autumn of 1875. During several weeks 
which he passed at Nahant, a seaside resort near 
Boston, I saw him almost daily. He walked feebly 
and with some little difficulty, and complained of 
a feeling of great weight in the right arm, which 
made writing laborious. His handwriting had not 
betrayed any very obvious change, so far as I had 
noticed in his letters. His features and speech 
were without any paralytic character. His mind 
was clear except when, as on one or two occa- 
sions, he complained of some confused feeling, and 



Sect. XXIIL 

1874-1877. 



Death of 
Mrs. Motley. 



Mr. Motley- 
visits Amer* 
ica. 



214 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXIII. 

1874-1877. 



His daugh- 
ter Lady 
Harcourt's 
account. 



walked a few minutes in the open air to compose 
himself. His thoughts were always tending to re- 
vert to the almost worshipped companion from 
whom death had parted him a few months before. 
Yet he could often be led away to other topics, and 
in talking of them could be betrayed into momentary 
cheerfulness of manner. His long-enduring and all- 
pervading grief was not more a tribute to the virtues 
and graces of her whom he mourned than an evi- 
dence of the deeply affectionate nature which in 
other relations endeared him to so many whose 
friendship was a title to love and honor. 

I have now the privilege of once more recurring 
to the narrative of Mr. Motley's daughter, Lady 
Harcourt. 

" The harassing work and mental distress of this 
time [after the recall from England] acting on an 
acutely nervous organization, began the process of 
undermining his constitution, of which we were 
so soon to see the results. It was not the least 
courageous act of his life, that, smarting under a 
fresh wound, tired and unhappy, he set his face 
immediately towards the accomplishment of fresh 
literary labor. After my sister's marriage in Janu- 
ary he went to the Hague to begin his researches 
in the archives for John of Barnevelt. The Queen 
of the Netherlands had made ready a house for us, 



A Memoir. 



215 



and personally superintended every preparation for 
his reception. We remained there until the spring, 
and then removed to a house more immediately in 
the town, a charming old-fashioned mansion, once 
lived in by John de Witt, where he had a large 
library and every domestic comfort during the year 
of his sojourn. The incessant literary labor in an 
enervating climate with enfeebled health may have 
prepared the way for the first break in his consti- 
tution, which was to show itself soon after. There 
were many compensations in the life about him. 
He enjoyed the privilege of constant companion- 
ship with one of the warmest hearts and finest in- 
tellects which I have ever known in a woman — 
the dme, d'elite which has passed beyond this earth. 
The gracious sentiment with which the Queen 
sought to express her sense of what Holland owed 
him would have been deeply felt even had her per- 
sonal friendship been less dear to us all. From the 
King, the society of the Hague, and the diplomatic 
circle we had many marks of kindness. Once or 
twice I made short journeys with him for change 
of air to Amsterdam, to look for the portraits of 
John of Barneveld and his wife ; to Bohemia, 
where, with the lingering hope of occupying him- 
self with the Thirty Years' War, he looked care- 
fully at the scene of Wallenstein's death near 
Prague, and later to Varzin in Pomerania for a 



Sect. XXIIL 
1874-1877. 



Lady 

Harcourt'a 

account. 



The Queen 
of the Neth- 
erlands. 



Journeys. 



216 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXIII. 

1874. 

Lady 

Harcourt's 

account. 



Illness. 



week with Prince Bismarck, after the great events 
of the Franco-German war. In the autumn of 
1872 we moved to England, partly because it was 
evident that his health and my mother's required a 
change ; partly for private reasons to be near my 
sister and her children. The day after our arrival 
at Bournemouth occurred the rupture of a vessel on 
the lungs, without any apparently sufficient cause. 
He recovered enough to revise and complete his 
manuscript, and we thought him better, when at 
the end of July, in London, he was struck down 
by the first attack of the head, which robbed him 
of all after power of work, although the intellect 
remained untouched. Sir William Gull sent him 
to Cannes for the winter, where he was seized with 
a violent internal inflammation, in which I suppose 
there was again the indication of the lesion of 
blood-vessels. I am nearing the shadow now — 
the time of which I can hardly bear to write. You 
know the terrible sorrow which crushed him on 
the last day of 1874, — the grief which broke his 
heart and from which he never rallied. From that 
day it seems to me that his life may be summed 
up in the two words, — patient waiting. Never for 
one hour did her spirit leave him, and he strove to 
follow its leading for the short and evil days left 
and the hope of the life beyond. I think I have 
never watched quietly and reverently the traces of 



A Memoir. 



217 



one personal character remaining so strongly im- 
pressed on another nature. With her self-depre- 
ciation and unselfishness she would have been the 
last to believe how much of him w^as in her very 
existence ; nor could we have realized it until the 
parting came. Henceforward, with the mind still 
there, but with the machinery necessary to set it 
in motion disturbed and shattered, he could but try 
to create small occupations with which to fill the 
hours of a life which was only valued for his chil- 
dren's sake. Kind and loving friends in England 
and America soothed the passage, and our gratitude 
for so many gracious acts is deep and true. His 
love for children, always a strong feeling, was grati- 
fied by the constant presence of my sister's babies, 
the eldest a little girl who bore my mother's name, 
and had been her idol, being the companion of 
many hours and his best comforter. At the end 
the blow came swiftly and suddenly, as he would 
have wished it. It was a terrible shock to us who 
had vainly hoped to keep him a few years longer, 
but at least he v/as spared what he had dreaded 
with a great dread, a gradual failure of mental or 
bodily power. The mind w^as never clouded, the 
affections never weakened, and after a few hours of 
unconscious physical struggle he lay at rest, his 
face beautiful and calm, without a trace of suffer- 
ing or illness. Once or twice he said, ' It has 



Sect. XXIII. 
1874-1877. 



218 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXIII. 

1874-1877. 

The last 
hour. 



come, it has come/ and there were a few broken 
words before consciousness fled, but there was little 
time for messages or leave-taking. By a strange 
coincidence his life ended near the town of Dor- 
chester, in the mother country, as if the last hour 
brought with it a reminiscence of his birthplace, 
and of his own dearly loved mother. By his own 
wish only the dates of his birth and death appear 
upon his gravestone, with the text chosen by him- 
self, ' In God is light, and in him is no darkness 
at all.'" 



A Memoir. 



219 



XXIV. 

Conclusion, — Sis Character. — His Labors. — His 

Reward. 

In closing this restricted and imperfect record of 
a life which merits, and in due time will, I trust, 
receive an ampler tribute, I cannot refrain from 
adding a few thoughts which naturally suggest 
themselves, and some of which may seem quite 
unnecessary to the reader who has followed the 
story of the historian and diplomatist's brilliant 
and eventful career. 

Mr. Motley came of a parentage which promised 
the gifts of mind and body very generally to be 
accounted for, in a measure at least, wherever we 
find them, by the blood of one or both of the par- 
ents. They gave him special attractions and laid 
him open to not a few temptations. Too many 
young men born to shine in social life, to sparkle, 
it may be, in conversation, perhaps in the lighter 
walks of literature, become agreeable idlers, self- 
indulgent, frivolous, incapable of large designs or 
sustained effort, lose every aspiration and forget 
every ideal. Our gilded youth want such exam- 



Sect. XXIV. 
1814-1877. 



His endow- 
ments. 



220 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXIV. 
1814-1877. 



His tempera- 
ment. 



pies as this of Motley, not a solitary, but a con- 
spicuous one, to teach them how much better is 
the restlessness of a noble ambition than the nar- 
cotized stupor of club-life or the vapid amusement 
of a dressed-up intercourse which too often requires 
a questionable flavor of forbidden license to render 
it endurable to persons of vivacious character and 
temperament. 

It would seem difficult for a man so flattered 
from his earliest days to be modest in his self-esti- 
mate ; but Motley was never satisfied with himself. 
He was impulsive, and was occasionally, I have 
heard it said, over excited, when his prejudices were 
roughly handled. In all that related to the ques- 
tions involved in our civil war, he was, no doubt, 
very sensitive. He had heard so much that exas- 
perated him in the foreign society which he had 
expected to be in full sympathy with the cause 
of liberty as against slavery, that he might be 
excused if he showed impatience when he met with 
similar sentiments among his own countrymen. 
He felt that he had been cruelly treated by his 
own government, and no one who conceives him- 
self to have been wronged and insulted must be 
expected to reason in naked syllogisms on the 
propriety of the liberties which have been taken 
with his name and standing. But with all his 
quickness of feeling his manners were easy and 



A Memoir. 



221 



courteous, simply because his nature was warm and 
kindly, and with all his natural fastidiousness there 
was nothing of the coxcomh about him. 

He must have had enemies, as all men of strik- 
ing individuality are sure to have ; his presence 
cast more uncouth patriots into the shade; his 
learning was a reproach to the ignorant, his fame 
was too bright a distinction ; his high-bred air and 
refinement, which he could not help, would hardly 
commend him to the average citizen in an order of 
things in which mediocrity is at a premium, and 
the natural nobility of presence, which rarely comes 
without family antecedents to account for it, is not 
always agreeable to the many whose two ideals 
are the man on horseback and the man in his 
shirt-sleeves. It may well be questioned whether 
Washington, with his grand manner, would be 
nearly as popular with what are called " the 
masses" as Lincoln, with his homely ways and 
broad stories. The experiment of universal suffrage 
must render the waters of political and social life 
more or less turbid even if they remain innoxious. 
The Cloaca Maxima can hardly mingle its contents 
with the stream of the Aqua Claudia, without tak- 
ing something from its crystal clearness. We need 
not go so far as one of our well-known politicians 
has recently gone in saying that no great man can 
reach the highest position in our government, but 



Sect. XXIY. 

1814-1877. 

His gifts not 
a recom- 
raendatioQ 
to all. 



222 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Sect. XXIV 
1814 -1877. 



Disqualify- 
ing accom- 
plishments. 



we can safely say that, apart from military fame^ the 
loftiest and purest and finest personal qualities are 
not those which can be most depended upon at the 
ballot-box. Strange stories are told of avowed op- 
position to Mr. Motley on the ground of the most 
trivial differences in point of taste in personal mat- 
ters, — so told that it is hard to disbelieve them, 
and they show that the caprices which we might 
have thought belonged exclusively to absolute 
rulers among their mistresses or their minions may 
be felt in the councils of a great people which calls 
itself self-governing. It is perfectly true that Mr. 
Motley did not illustrate the popular type of poli- 
tician. He was too high-minded, too scholarly, 
too generously industrious, too polished, too much 
at home in the highest European circles, too much 
courted for his personal fascinations, too remote 
from the trading world of caucus managers. To 
degrade him, so far as official capital punishment 
could do it, was not merely to wrong one whom 
the nation should have delighted to honor as show- 
ing it to the world in the fairest flower of its 
young civilization, but it was an indignity to a 
representative of the highest scholarship of native 
growth, which every student in the land felt as a 
discouragement to all sound learning and noble 
ambition. 

If he was disappointed in his diplomatic career. 



A Memoir. 



223 



lie had enough, and more than enough, to console 
him in his brilliant literary triumphs. He had 
earned them all by the most faithful and patient 
labor. If he had not the " frame of adamant " of 
the Swedish hero, he had his " soul of fire." No 
labors could tire him, no difficulties affright him. 
What most surprised those who knew him as a 
young man was, not his ambition, not his brill- 
iancy, but his dogged, continuous capacity for 
work. We have seen with what astonishment 
the old Dutch scholar, Groen van Prinsterer, looked 
upon a man who had wrestled with authors like 
Bor and Van Meteren, who had grappled with the 
mightiest folios and toiled undiscouraged among 
half-illegible manuscript records. Having spared 
no pains in collecting his materials, he told his 
story, as we all know, with flowing ease and stir- 
ring vitality. His views may have been more or 
less partial ; Philip the Second may have deserved 
the pitying benevolence of poor Maximilian ; Mau- 
rice may have wept as sincerely over the errors of 
Arminius as any one of " the crocodile crew that 
believe in election " ; Barneveld and Grotius may 
have been on the road to Eome ; none of these 
things seem probable, but if they were all proved 
true in opposition to his views, we should still have 
the long roll of glowing tapestry he has woven for 
us, with all its life-like portraits, its almost moving 



Sect. XXIV. 
1814-1877. 



His untiring 
industry. 



Life and 
coloring of 
his style. 



224 



John LothrojJ Motley. 



Sect. XXIV. 

1814-1877. 

His fame. 



His treat- 
ment. 



His record. 



His memory. 



pageants, its sieges where we can see the artillery 
flashing, its battle-fields with their smoke and fire, 
— pictures which cannot fade and which will pre- 
serve his name interwoven with their own endur- 
ing colors. 

Eepublics are said to be -ungrateful ; it might be 
truer to say that they are forgetful. They forgive 
those who have wronged them as easily as they for- 
get those who have done them good service. But 
History never forgets and never forgives. To her 
decision we may trust the question, whether the 
warm-hearted patriot who had stood up for his 
country nobly and manfully in the hour of trial, 
the great scholar and writer who had reflected honor 
upon her throughout the world of letters, the high- 
minded public servant, whose shortcomings it taxed 
the ingenuity of experts to make conspicuous enough 
to be presentable, was treated as such a citizen 
should have been dealt with. His record is safe in 
her hands, and his memory will be precious al- 
ways in the hearts of all who enjoyed his friend- 
ship. 



APPENDIX. 



A. 



The Saturday Clvh. 

[See Page 119.] 

This Club, of which we were both members, and 
which is still flourishing, came into existence in a 
very quiet sort of way at about the same time as 
the Atlantic Monthly, and although entirely uncon- 
nected with that magazine, included as members 
some of its chief contributors. Of those who might 
have been met at some of the monthly gatherings 
in its earlier days I may mention Emerson, Haw- 
thorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Motley, Whipple, Whit- 
tier; Professors Agassiz and Peirce; John S. Dwight; 
Governor Andrew, Eichard H. Dana, Junior, Charles 
Sumner. It offered a wide gamut of intelligences, 
and the meetings were noteworthy occasions. If 
there was not a certain amount of " mutual admira- 
tion " among some of those I have mentioned it was 
a great pity, and implied a defect in the nature of 



Appendix A. 



The Satur- 
day Club. 



226 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix A, 



The Satur- 
Club. 



A parting 
health. 



men who were otherwise largely endowed. The 
vitality of this club has depended in a great meas- 
ure on its utter poverty in statutes and by-laws, 
its entire absence of formality, and its blessed free- 
dom from speech-making. 

That holy man, Eichard Baxter, says in his 
Preface to " Alleine's Alarm " : "I have done, when 
I have sought to remove a little scandal, which I 
foresaw, that I should myself write the Preface to 
his Life where himself and two of his friends make 
such a mention of my name, which I cannot own ; 
which will seem a praising him for praising me. I 
confess it looketh ill-favoredly in me. But I had 
not the power of other men's writings, and durst 
not forbear that which was his due." 

I do not know that I have any occasion for a 
similar apology in printing the following lines read 
at a meeting of members of the Saturday Club and 
other friends who came together to bid farewell to 
Motley before his return to Europe in 1857. 



A PAETING HEALTH. 

Yes, we knew we must lose him, — though friendship 

may claim 
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame, 
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, 
'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown. 



Appendix. 



227 



As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel, — 
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, — 
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, 
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring. 

What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom 

Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall 

bloom, 
While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes 
That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies ! 

In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time, 
Where flit the dark spectres of passion and crime, 
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung. 
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue ! 

Let us hear the proud story that time has bequeathed 
From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed ! 
Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom, 
Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with 
his broom ! 



The dream flashes by, for the west- winds awake 
On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake. 
To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine 
With incense they stole from the rose and the pine. 



Appendix A. 



A parting 
health. 



228 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix A. 



A parting 
health. 



So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed 
When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and 

crushed ; 
The true Knight op Learning, — the world holds him 

dear, — 
Love bless him, joy crown him, God speed his career ! 



Appendix. 



229 



Appendix B. 

Habits and Methods of Study. 

Mr. Motley's daughter, Lady Harcourt, has fa- 
vored me with many interesting particulars which 
I could not have learned except from a member 
of his own family. Her description of his way of 
living and of working will be best given in her 
own words : — 

" He generally rose early, the hour varying some- 
what at different parts of his life, according to his 
work and health. Sometimes when much absorbed 
by literary labor he would rise before seven, often 
lighting his own fire, and with a cup of tea or coffee 
writing until the family breakfast hour, after which 
his work was immediately resumed, and he usually 
sat over his writing-table until late in the afternoon, 
when he would take a short walk. His dinner 
hour was late, and he rarely worked at night. 
During the early years of his literary studies he 
led a life of great retirement. Later, after the pub- 
lication of the Dutch Eepublic and during the years 
of official place, he was much in society in England, 
Austria, and Holland. He enjoyed social life, and 



Appendix B. 



Modes of 
life and 
habits of 
work. 



230 



John Lothrop Motley. 



A,PPENDIX B. 



Modes of 
life and 
habits of 
work. 



particularly dining out, keenly, but was very mod- 
erate and simple in all his personal habits, and for 
many years before his death had entirely given up 
smoking. His work, when not in his own library, 
was in the Archives of the Netherlands, Brussels, 
Paris, the English State Paper Office, and the Brit- 
ish Museum, where he made his own researches, 
patiently and laboriously consulting original manu- 
scripts and reading masses of correspondence, from 
which he afterwards sometimes caused copies to be 
made, and where he worked for many consecutive 
hours a day. After his material had been thus 
painfully and toilfully amassed, the writing of his 
own story was always done at home, and his mind, 
having digested the necessary matter, always poured 
itself forth in writing so copiously that his revision 
was chiefly devoted to reducing the over-abundance. 
He never shrank from any of the drudgery of prepa- 
ration, but I think his own part of the work was 
sheer pleasure to him." 

I should have mentioned that his residence in 
London while Minister was at the house No. 17 
Arlington Street, belonging to Lord Yarborough. 



Appendix. 



231 



Appendix O. 

Sir WilliaifYi CktlVs Account of his Illness. 

I HAVE availed myself of tlie permission implied 
in the subjoined letter of Sir William Gull to make 
large extracts from his account of Mr. Motley's 
condition while imder his medical care. In his 
earlier years he had often complained to me of 
those " nervous feelings connected with the respi- 
ration " referred to by this very distinguished phy- 
sician. I do not remember any other habitual 
trouble to which he was subject. 



74 Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, W. 
February 13, 1878. 

My dear Sir, — I send the notes of Mr. Motley's 
last illness, as I promised. They are too technical 
for general readers, but you will make such excep- 
tion as you require. The medical details may in- 
terest your professional friends. Mr. Motley's case 
was a striking illustration that the renal disease 
of so-called Bright's disease may supervene as part 



Appendix C. 



Sir William 
Gull's ac- 
count of Mr. 
Motley's 
illness. 



232 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix C. 

Sir William 
Gull's ac- 
count of Mr. 
Motley's 
illness. 



and parcel of a larger and antecedent change in the 
blood-vessels in other parts than the kidney. . . . 
I am, my dear sir, 

Yours very truly, 

WILLIAM W. GULL. 
To Oliver Wendell Holmes, Esq. 



I first saw Mr. Motley, I believe, about the year 
1870, on account of some nervous feelings connected 
with the respiration. At that time his general 
health was good, and all he complained of was oc- 
casionally a feeling of oppression about the chest. 
There were no physical signs of anything abnormal, 
and the symptoms quite passed away in the course 
of time, and with the use of simple antispasmodic 
remedies, such as camphor and the like. This was 
my first interview with Mr. Motley, and I was nat- 
urally glad to have the opportunity of making his 
acquaintance. I remember that in our conversa- 
tion I jokingly said that my wife could hardly for- 
give him for not making her hero, Henri IV., a 
perfect character, and the earnestness with which 
he replied au serieux, " I assure you I have fairly 
recorded the facts." After this date I did not see 
Mr. Motley for some time. He had three slight 
attacks of haemoptysis in the autumn of 1872, but 
no physical signs of change in the lung tissue re- 



Appendicc. 



233 



suited. So early as this I noticed that there were 
signs of commencing thickening in the heart, as 
shown by the degree and extent of its impulse. 
The condition of his health, though at that time 
not very obviously failing, a good deal arrested my 
attention, as I thought I could perceive in the 
occurrence of the haemoptysis, and in the cardiac 
hypertrophy, the early beginnings of vascular de- 
generation. 

In August, 1873, occurred the remarkable seizure, 
from the effects of which Mr. Motley never recov- 
ered. I did not see him in the attack, but was in- 
formed, as far as I can remember, that he was on 
a casual visit at a friend's house at luncheon (or it 
might have been dinner), when he suddenly became 

strangely excited, but not quite unconscious 

I believed at the time, and do so still, that there 
was some capillary apoplexy of the convolutions. 
The attack was attended with some hemiplegic 
weakness on the right side, and altered sensation, 
and ever after there was a want of freedom and 
ease both in the gait and in the use of the arm 
of that side. To my inquiries from time to time 
how the arm was, the patient would always 
flex and extend it freely, but nearly always used 
the expression, " There is a bedevilment in it " ; 
though the hand-writing was not much, if at all, 
altered. 



Appendix C. 



Sir William 
Gull's ac- 
count of Ixis 
illness. 



234 



John Lotlirop Motley. 



Appendix C. 

Sir WiUiam 
Gull's ac- 
count of his 
illness. 



His letter to 
I Dr. Frank. 



In December, 1873, Mr. Motley went by my 
advice to Cannes. I wrote the following letter* at 
the time to my friend Dr. Frank, who was prac- 
tising there : — 

December 29, 1873. 

My deak Dr. Frank, — My friend Mr. Motley, 
the historian and late American Minister, whose 
name and fame no doubt you know very well, has 
by my advice come to Cannes for the winter and 
spring, and I have promised him to give you some 
account of his case. To me it is one of special in- 
terest, and personally, as respects the subject of it, 
of painful interest. I have known Mr. Motley for 
some time, but he consulted me for the present con- 
dition about midsummer. 

.... If I have formed a correct opinion of the 
pathology of the case, I believe the smaller vessels 
are degenerating in several parts of the vascular 
area, lung, brain, and kidneys. With this view I 
have suggested a change of climate, a nourishing 
diet, etc. ; and it is to be hoped, and I trust ex- 
pected, that by great attention to the conditions of 
hygiene, internal and external, the progress of de- 
generation may be retarded. I have no doubt you 
wiU find, as time goes on, increasing evidence of 

* This letter, every word of which was of value to the practi- 
tioner who was to have charge of the patient, relates many of the 
facts given above, and I shall therefore only give extracts from it. 



Appendix. 



235 



renal change, but this is rather a coincidence and 
consequence than a cause, though no doubt when 
the renal change has reached a certain point, it be- 
comes in its own way a factor of other lesions. I 
have troubled you at this length because my mind 
is much occupied with the pathology of these cases, 
and because no case can, on personal grounds, more 
strongly challenge our attention. 

Yours very truly, 

WILLIAM W. GULL. 

During the spring of 1874, whilst at Cannes, Mr. 
Motley had a sharp attack of nephritis, attended 
with fever ; but on returning to England in July 
there was no important change in the health. The 
weakness of the side continued, and the inability to 
undertake any mental work. The signs of cardiac 
hypertrophy were more distinct. In the beginning 
of the year 1875 I wrote as follows : — 

February 20, 1875. 

My deak Mr. Motley, — .... The examination 
I have just made appears to indicate that the main 
conditions of your health are more stable than they 
were some months ago, and would therefore be so 
far in favor of your going to America in the sum- 
mer, as we talked of. The ground of my doubt has 
lain in the possibility of such a trip further disor- 



Appendix C. 



Sir William 
Gull's ac- 
count of hig 
illuess. 



236 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix C 

Sir William 
Gull's ac- 
count of liis 
illness. 



Mr. Motley's 
letter to Sir 
William Gull. 



dering the circulation. Of this, I hope, there is 
now less risk. 

On the 4th of June, 1875, I received the follow- 
ing letter. 

Calverly Park Hotel, Tunbridge Wells, 
June 4, 1875. 

My dear Sm William, — I have been absent 
from town for a long time, but am to be there on 
the 9th and 10th. Could I make an appointment 
with you for either of those days ? I am anxious 
to have a full consultation with you before leaving 
for America. Our departure is fixed for the 19th 
of this month. I have not been worse than usual 
of late. I think myself, on the contrary, rather 
stronger, and it is almost impossible for me not to 
make my visit to America this summer, unless you 
should absolutely prohibit it. If neither of those 
days should suit you, could you kindly suggest an- 
other day? I hope, however, you can spare me 
half an hour on one of those days, as I like to get 
as much of this bracing air as I can. Will you 
kindly name the hour when I may call on you, and 
address me at this hotel. Excuse this slovenly note 
in pencil, but it fatigues my head and arm much 
more to sit at a writing-table with pen and ink. 
Always most sincerely yours, 

My dear Sir William. 

J. L. MOTLEY. 



Appendix. 



237 



On Mr. Motley's return from America I saw him, 
and found him, I thought, rather better in general 
health than when he left England. 

In December, 1875, Mr. Motley consulted me for 
trouble of vision in reading or walking, from sensa- 
tions like those produced by flakes of falling snow 
coming between him and the objects he was looking 
at. Mr. Bowman, one of our most excellent oculists, 
was then consulted. Mr. Bowman wrote to me as 
follows : " Such symptoms as exist point rather to 
disturbed retinal function than to any brain-mis- 
chief. It is, how^ever, quite likely that what you 
fear for the brain may have had its counterpart 
in the nerve-structures of the eye, and as he is 
short-sighted, this tendency may be further inten- 
sified." 

Mr. Bowman suggested no more than such an 
arrangement of glasses as might put the eyes, when 
in use, under better optic conditions. 

The year 1876 was passed over without any spe- 
cial change worth notice. The walking powers 
were much impeded by the want of control over 
the right leg. The mind was entirely clear, though 
Mr. Motley did not feel equal, and indeed had 
been advised not to apply himself to any literary 
work. Occasional conversations, when I had inter- 
views with him on the subject of his health, proved 
that the attack which had weakened the move- 



Appendix C. 



Sir William 
Gull's ac- 
count of his 
illness. 



238 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix C. 



Sir William 
Gull's ac- 
count of his 
illness. 



His mental 
condition. 



ments of the right side had not impaired the men- 
tal power. The most noticeable change which had 
come over Mr. Motley since I first knew him was 
due to the death of Mrs. Motley in December, 1874. 
It had in fact not only profoundly depressed him, 
but, if I may so express it, had removed the centre 
of his thought to a new world. In long conversa- 
tions with me of a speculative kind, after that pain- 
ful event, it was plain how much his point of view of 
the whole course and relation of things had changed. 
His mind was the last to dogmatize on any subject. 
There was a candid and childlike desire to know, 
with an equal confession of the incapacity of the 
human intellect. I wish I could recall the actual 
expressions he used, but the sense was that which 
has been so well stated by Hooker in concluding 
an exhortation against the pride of the human in- 
tellect, where he remarks : — 

" Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man 
to wade far into the doings of the Most High; 
whom although to know be life, and joy to make 
mention of His Name, yet our soundest knowledge 
is to know that we know Him, not indeed as He 
is, neither can know Him ; and our safest elo- 
quence concerning Him is our silence, when 
we confess without confession that His glory is 
inexplicable. His greatness above our capacity 
and reach. He is above and we upon earth; 



Appendix. 



239 



therefore it belioveth our words to be wary and 
few." 

Mrs. Motley's illness was not a long one, and 
the nature of it was such that its course could with 
certainty be predicted. Mr. Motley and her chil- 
dren passed the remaining days of her life, extend- 
ing over about a month, with her, in the mutual 
understanding that she was soon to part from them. 
The character of the illness, and the natural ex- 
haustion of. her strength by suffering, lessened the 
shock of her death, though not the loss, to those 
who survived her. 

The last time I saw Mr. Motley was, I believe, 
about two months before his death, March 28th, 
1877. There was no gTeat change in his health, 
but he complained of indescribable sensations in his 
nervous system, and felt as if losing the whole 
power of walking, but this was not obvious in his 
gait, although he walked shorter distances than be- 
fore. I heard no more of him until I was suddenly 
summoned on the 29th of May into Devonshire to 
see him. The telegram I received was so urgent, 
that I suspected some rupture of a blood-vessel in 
the brain, and that I should hardly reach him alive ; 
and this was the case. About two o'clock in the 
day he complained of a feeling of faintness, said he 
felt ill and should not recover ; and in a few min- 
utes was insensible with symptoms of ingravescent 



Appendix C. 



Sir William 
Gull's ac- 
count of his 
iUness. 



Mrs. Mot- 
ley's illness 
and death. 



240 



John Lotlirop Motley. 



Appendix C. 



apoplexy. There was extensive hsemorrliage into 
the brain, as shown by post-mortem examination, 
the cerebral vessels being atheromatous. The fatal 
hgemorrhage had occurred into the lateral ven- 
tricles, from rupture of one of the middle cerebral 
arteries. 

I am, my dear Sir, 

Yours very truly, 

"WILLIAM W. GULL. 



Appendix. 



241 



Appendix D. 

Place of Burial. — Funeral Service. — Epitaphs. — 
Dean Stanleys Funeral Sermon. 

Mr. Motley was buried by the side of bis wife 
in Kensal Green Cemetery, just outside of London. 
Services were held in the chapel at the cemetery. 

The following account of the funeral is extracted 
from a letter of Mr. Smalley to the New York 
Tribune : — 

" Mr. Motley was buried on Monday in Kensal 
Green Cemetery, Dean Stanley performing the 
service. The funeral was neither quite public nor 
quite private. It had been Dean Stanley's wish 
that it should take place in Westminster Abbey. 
He had proposed that the body, when brought from 
Dorsetshire, should lie over night in the Abbey ; 
that a ceremony should be held there in the morn- 
ing, and that the friends of the deceased should 
assemble at the Abbey and accompany the body 
thence to the cemetery. But some difficulties — I 
could not make out what — stood in the way of 
this arrangement. It is cause for regret that the 
kind purposes of the Dean could not be carried 



Appendix D. 



Funeral of 
Mr. Motley. 



Mr. 

Smalley's 
account. 



242 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix D. 



Funeral of 
Mr. Motley. 



Mr. 

Smalley s 
account. 



out. Mr. Motley's friends — and all Americans, 
because he was an American — would have liked 
that some of the last words said over him should 
have been said in the great church which has so 
peculiar an interest for Americans, — which Ameri- 
cans in general venerate as they venerate no cathe- 
dral and no other church. As it was not to be, we 
can only express our gratitude to Dean Stanley for 
his readiness to bring it about. 

" The service at the Kensal Green Chapel was of 
course the burial service of the Church of England, 
of which Mr. Motley was a member. His three 
daughters. Lady Harcourt, Mrs. Sheridan, and Miss 
Motley, were present, and with Sir William Har- 
court, Mr. Eussell Sturgis, and Mr. Sheridan, fol- 
lowed the coffin from the chapel to the grave. 
Among others present were Mr. Bright, the Duke 
of Argyll, Mr. Froude, Lord Houghton, Mr. Thomas 
Hughes, the Minister of the ^Netherlands, the Min- 
ister of Belgium, the Hon. Lyulph Stanley, Mr. 
Lecky, Mr. Hoppin, Mr. Murray, Mr. Edward 
Dicey, and Mr. Conway." 

The inscriptions on the gravestones are these : — - 

JOHT^ LOTHROP MOTLEY. 

BORN AT DORCHESTER, MASS., APRIL 15, 1814. 

DIED NEAR DORCHESTER, DORSET, MAY 29, 1877. 

In God is light, and in Mm is no ^darkness at all. 



Appendix. 



243 



Extract 
from Dean 
Stanley's 



MARY ELIZABETH, WIFE OF JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, ^^^^nd^^ IN- 
BORN APRIL 7, 1813. 
DIED DECEMBER 31, 1874. 
Truth shall make yoio free. 



On the 3d of June Dean Stanley preached a ser- 
mon in Westminster Abbey, in which he referred 
with much feeling to the death of Mr. Motley. 
I give a few extracts from the manuscript notes 
sent me by Miss Motley. 

" . . . . But there is a yet deeper key of har- 
mony that has just been struck within the last week. 
The hand of death has removed from his dwelling- 
place amongst us one of the brightest lights of the 
Western hemisphere, — the high-spirited patriot, 
the faithful friend of England's best and purest 
spirits, the brilliant, the indefatigable historian who 
told as none before him had told the history of the 
rise and struggle of the Dutch Eepublic, almost a 
part of his own. 

" We sometimes ask what room or place is left 
in the crowded temple of Europe's fame for one of 
the Western world to occupy. But a sufficient 
answer is given in the work which was reserved to 
be accomplished by him who has just departed. 
So long as the tale of the greatness of the house 
of Orange, of the siege of Leyden, of the tragedy 
of Barneveld, interests mankind, so long will Hoi- 



244 



Joltn Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix D. 

Extract 
from Dean 
Stanley's 
sermon. 



land be indissolubly connected with the name of 
Motley in that union of the ancient culture of 
Europe with the aspirations of America which was 
so remarkable in the ardent, laborious, soaring soul 
that has passed away. He loved that land of his 
with a passionate zeal, he loved the land of his 

adoption with a surpassing love He loved 

the fatherland, the mother tongue of the litera- 
ture which he had made his own. He loved the 
land which was the happy home of his children, and 
which contained the dearly cherished grave of her 
beside whom he will be laid to-morrow. When- 
ever any gifted spirit passes from our world to the 
other it brings both within our nearer view, — the 
world of this mortal hfe with its contentions and 
strifes, its joys and griefs, now to him closed for- 
ever, but amidst which he won his fame, and in 
which his name shall long endure, and the other 
world of our ideal vision, of our inexhaustible long- 
ings, of our blank misgivings, of our inextinguish- 
able hopes, of our everlasting reunions, the eternal 
love in which live the spirits of the just made per- 
fect, the heavenly Jerusalem, which being above is 
free, the city of which God himself is the light, 
and in whose light we shall see light." 



Appendix. 



245 



Appendix E. 

From the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical 

Society. 

At a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, held on Thursday, the 14th of June, 1877, 
after the reading of the records of the preceding 
meeting, the President, the Hon. Eobert C. Win- 
throp, spoke as follows : — 

" Our first thoughts to-day, gentlemen, are of 
those whom we may not again welcome to these 
halls. We shall be in no mood, certainly, for en- 
tering on other subjects this morning, until we have 
given some expression to our deep sense of the loss 
— the double loss — which our Society has sus- 
tained since our last monthly meeting." .... * 

After a most interesting and cordial tribute to 
his friend, Mr. Quincy, Mr. Winthrop continued : — 

" The death of our distinguished associate. Motley, 
can hardly have taken many of us by surprise. 
Sudden at the moment of its occurrence, we had 

* Edmund Quincy died May 17. John Lothrop Motley died 
May 29. 



Appendix E. 



Tributes of 
the Mass. 
Historical 
Society. 



Hon. R. C. 
Winthrop's 
remarks. 



246 



John Lotlirop Motley. 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. Mr. 
Winthrop's 
remarks. 



long been more or less prepared for it by his failing 
health. It must, indeed, have been quite too evi- 
dent to those who had seen him, during the last 
two or three years, that his life-work was finished. 
I think he so regarded it himself. 

" Hopes may have been occasionally revived in 
the hearts of his friends, and even in his own heart, 
that his long-cherished purpose of completing a 
History of the Thirty Years' War, as the grand con- 
summation of his historical labors, — for which all 
his other volumes seemed to him to have been but 
the preludes and overtures, — might still be accom- 
plished. But such hopes, faint and flickering from 
his first attack, had wellnigh died away. They 
were like Prescott's hopes of completing his Philip 
the Second, or like Macaulay's hopes of finishing 
his brilhant History of England. 

" But great as may be the loss to literature of 
such a crowning work from Motley's pen, it was by 
no means necessary to the completeness of his own 
fame. His ' Else of the Dutch Eepublic,' his 
' History of the United Netherlands,' and his ' Life 
of John of Barneveld," had abundantly established 
his reputation, and given him a fixed place among 
the most eminent historians of our country and of 



our age. 



"No American writer, certainly, has secured a 
wider recognition or a higher appreciation from the 



Appendix. 

scholars of the Old World. The Universities of 
England and the learned societies of Europe have 
bestowed upon him their largest honors. It hap- 
pened to me to be in Paris when he was first chosen 
a corresponding member of the Institute, and when 
his claims were canvassed with the freedom and 
earnestness which peculiarly characterize such a 
candidacy in France. There was no mistaking the 
profound impression which his first work had made 
on the minds of such men as Guizot and Mignet. 
Within a year or two past a still higher honor has 
been awarded him from the same source. The 
journals not long ago announced his election as one 
of the six foreign associates of the French Academy 
of Moral and Political Sciences, — a distinction 
which Prescott would probably have attained had 
he lived a few years longer, until there was a 
vacancy, but which, as a matter of fact, I believe. 
Motley was the only American writer, except the 
late Edward Livingston, of Louisiana, who has 
actually enjoyed. 

" Eesiding much abroad, for the purpose of pur- 
suing his historical researches, he had become the 
associate and friend of the most eminent literary 
men in almost all parts of the world, and the sin- 
gular charms of his conversation and manners had 
made him a favorite guest in the most refined and 
exalted circles. 



247 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. Mr. 
"Winthrop'a 
remarks. 



248 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. Mr. 
Winthrop's 
remarks. 



" Of his relations to political and public life, this 
is hardly the occasion or the moment for speaking 
in detail. Misconstructions and injustices are the 
proverbial lot of those who occupy eminent position. 
It was a duke of Vienna, if I remember rightly, 
whom Shakespeare, in his ' Measure for Measure/ 
introduces as exclaiming, — 

* place and greatness, millions of false eyes 
Are stuck upon, thee ! Volumes of report 
Run with these false and most contrarious quests 
Upon thy doings ! Thousand 'scapes of wit 
Make thee the father of their idle dream, 
And rack thee in their fancies ! ' 

'' I forbear from all application of the lines. It 
is enough for me, certainly, to say here, to-day, that 
our country was proud to be represented at the 
courts of Vienna and London successively by a 
gentleman of so much culture and accomplishment 
as Mr. Motley, and that the circumstances of his 
recall were deeply regretted by us all. 

" His fame, however, was quite beyond the reach 
of any such accidents, and could neither be enhanced 
or impaired by appointments or removals. As a 
powerful and brilliant historian we pay him our 
unanimous tribute of admiration and regret, and 
give him a place in our memories by the side of 
Prescott and Irving. I do not forget how many of 
us lament him, also, as a cherished friend. 



Appendix. 



249 



" He died on the 29tli ultimo, at the house of his 
daughter, Mrs. Sheridan, in Dorsetshire, England, 
and an impressive tribute to his memory was paid, 
in Westminster Abbey, on the following Sunday, 
by our Honorary Member, Dean Stanley. Such a 
tribute, from such lips, and with such surroundings, 
leaves nothing to be desired in the way of eulogy. 
He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, by the 
side of his beloved wife. 

" One might well say of Motley precisely what 
he said of Prescott, in a letter from Eome to our 
associate, Mr. William Amory, immediately on 
hearing of Prescott's death : ' I feel inexpressibly 
disappointed — speaking now for an instant purely 
from a literary point of view — that the noble and 
crowning monument of his life, for which he had 
laid such massive foundations, and the structure of 
which had been carried forward in such a grand and 
masterly manner, must remain uncompleted, like 
the unfinished peristyle of some stately and beauti- 
ful temple on which the night of time has suddenly 
descended. But, still, the w^orks which his great 
and untiring hand had already thoroughly finished 
will remain to attest his learning and genius, — a 
precious and perpetual possession for his country,' 

" I am authorized by the Council to offer the fol- 
lowing resolutions : — 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. Mr. 
Winthrop's 
remarks. 



250 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix E. 

Mass. Hist. 
Society. 



Resolves 
offered. 



Mr. Amory's 
remarks. 



" ' Besohed, That by the death of the Hon. John 
Lothrop Motley this Society has lost one of its 
most distinguished members, and American litera- 
ture one of its brightest ornaments ; a son of Mas- 
sachusetts, who, in illustrating so powerfully the 
annals of another land, has reflected the highest 
honor on his own, and whose fame as an historian 
will ever be cherished amonsj the treasures of his 
native State. 

" ' Resolved, That the President be requested to 
nominate one of our associates to prepare a Memoir 
of Mr. Motley.' " 

William Amory, Esq., spoke as follows : — 
" I thank you cordially, Mr. President, for afford- 
ing to me at this time the opportunity of paying 
the tribute of a few remarks to the memory of one 
whom I had so long known, loved, and honored 
as Mr. Motley ; and, though I may fail to do it in 
words suitable to the occasion, or satisfactory to 
myself, I am compelled by the promptings of my 
heart, not alone in silence to mingle my tears with 
those of the family and friends who mourn the loss 
of a father, brother, and friend, but to join also my 
voice with the voices of those who are gathered 
here to-day to deplore the loss and honor the mem- 
ory of him who, as our associate, by his writings 
and character has contributed so largely to elevate 



Appendix. 



251 



the reputation of this Society, to embellish the 
name of this community, and to reflect throughout 
the civilized world the lustre of his own name on 
the literature of his native country. Till about 
1840 1 personally knew little of Mr. Motley; but 
since then our intimacy has been unbroken and our 
intercourse uninterrupted, except by his absence in 
Europe. The lapse of almost forty years since I 
first saw him has scarcely effaced from the fresh- 
ness of my memory my first impression of the 
transparent nature and striking idiosyncrasies of 
his remarkable character, which made it easy to 
imagine the past, and not difficult to divine the 
future of his brilliant career. The expressive 
beauty of his face, the manly elegance of his person, 
his winning ways, his sparkling wit, and the irre- 
sistible charm of his conversation, all gave even then 
assurance of distinction and promise of fame in his 
riper years. A few years later, at about thirty, not 
inclined to the practice of the law, which he had 
studied partly as an accomplishment, partly as a 
possible means of support, and partly as a prepara- 
tion for any other pursuit he might embrace as 
more congenial to his temperament or taste, he 
determined upon a literary career, and, as his gen- 
ius, attainments, studies, and tastes inclined him 
thereto, he, fortunately for himself and the world, 
adopted history as a specialty, and selected 'The 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Mr. Amoiy's 
remarks. 



252 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix E 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Mr. Amory's 
remarks. 



Eise of the Dutch Kepublic ' as the subject of his 
first historical work. 

" His brilliant success a few years later, on the 
publication of that book, showed how wisely he 
had chosen for his own reputation, for the honor of 
the republic whose history he faithfully, pictu- 
resquely, and elegantly depicted, and for that of the 
republic at home, upon which he at once shed such 
glory as a writer. By this, his first history, pub- 
lished in London in 1856, he was raised by com- 
mon consent at one bound to the front rank of 
illustrious historians in the English language, and 
by his subsequent works, though perhaps less at- 
tractive to the general reader, he has sustained the 
reputation he at that time acquired. 

"With a few of , his friends in this country, I 
was favored with the privilege of a perusal of those 
volumes before they were published in England; 
and, though already entertaining a high apprecia- 
tion of his genius and powers, I was inexpressibly 
surprised at the eloquence of the style, the interest 
of the narrative, the variety, aptitude, and brill- 
iancy of the illustrations, and the life-like fidelity 
of the portraits of the chief actors in that wonder- 
ful historical drama, but above all by the untiring 
industry and diligent research displayed through- 
out in procuring, preparing, and using so ably such 
copious materials from such various sources. Three 



Appendix. 



253 



years after its publication, in 1859, Mr. Motley, on 
hearing of the death of W. H. Prescott, his friend 
and brother historian, wrote from Eome a lonsf let- 
ter, containing a very interesting account of an inter- 
view he had sought with Mr. Prescott about twelve 
years before, in relation to the subject of the Eise 
of the Dutch Eepublic. That letter was read by Mr. 
Sears at a meeting of this Society, holden in April, 
1859, and recorded in full on page 266 of the pub- 
lished ' Proceedings ' of 1858-60. Though too long 
to be rea.d here, it is so touching and beautiful 
a letter, and so creditable and honorable to both 
Mr. Motley and Mr. Prescott, that I have ventured 
to allude to it for the benefit of such members of 
this Society as have either forgotten or never seen 
it, and to whom at this moment it may have a 
peculiar interest, if they possess the volume of the 
' Proceedings ' referred to. The subject of the letter 
may be briefly stated thus : About 1846, Mr. Motley 
had collected materials and made preparations to 
write ' The Eise of the Dutch Eepublic,' ignorant 
of the fact that Mr. Prescott had still earlier also 
made still larger preparations to write the 'His- 
tory of Philip XL' As, in writing upon subjects 
so closely identified in time and events, it was 
obvious that Mr. Motley must often traverse the 
same ground occupied by Mr. Prescott, he deter- 
mined, when informed by a friend of Mr. Prescott's 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Mr. /imory*8 
remarks. 



254 



John LotliTop Motley. 



Appendix E, 



Mass. Hist. 

Society. 
Mr. Amory's 
remarks. 



intention, to go to him and confer with him on the 
subject; and, if he should find that Mr. Prescott 
had a shadow of objection to his proceeding with 
his history, to abandon it at once, though abeady 
so enamored of the subject he had selected that it 
was to him, as he said, like surrendering his his- 
torical career. He did so, was most kindly re- 
ceived, and cordially encouraged to proceed with 
the work at once by Mr. Prescott, who, at the same 
time, generously volunteered to offer any aid in his 
power and the free use of his library. 

" Such is the summary of the purpose and result 
of that interview ; but to realize the sacrifice which 
the young aspirant to authorship was ready to 
make to a nice sense of honor and courtesy to the 
perhaps doubtful priority of the conventional claim 
of one with whom at that time he was only slightly 
acquainted, or to appreciate the genuine gratitude 
and pleasure inspired by the cordial aid and gener- 
ous encouragement offered him by Mr. Prescott, it 
is necessary to read the letter itself. 

" I have, Mr. President, perhaps dwelt too long 
on this subject ; but the temptation to present in 
one picture, and to illustrate by one anecdote, the 
different, but equally beautiful, traits of character 
exhibited in the same story by the two most illus- 
trious historians of this country must be my excuse. 

" You may well be proud, sir, that during your 



Appendix. 

presidency of the Massachusetts Historical Society 
the names of Prescott and Motley, both your asso- 
ciates, have been enrolled by universal consent in 
the same rank with those of Hume, Gibbon, and 
Eobertson, of the eighteenth century, and Hallam 
and Macaulay, of the nineteenth ; and it is worth 
recording on the same page that these friends and 
brother historians of the same subject were natives 
of the same State, citizens of the same city, grad- 
uates of the same college, equally remarkable for 
their personal beauty and the charms of their man- 
ners, published their first histories at the same 
time of life, and died in precisely the same man- 
ner, at about the same age. With more time, it 
would be gratifying to compare and contrast those 
elements of moral, intellectual, and social charac- 
ter, wdiich, though so different in each of these 
distinguished men, contributed so equally to the 
charms and celebrity of both in the world of letters 
and in the society of the world ; but it is too late, 
and I am conscious that already I have encroached 
upon the ground of his literary friends, instead of 
confining myself to those social and domestic beau- 
ties of his character, so much richer in interest and 
materials, and upon which I am so much better 
authority. One of these attributes, and, as I think, 
the most prominent and cliaracteristic of all, was 
the tender affectionateness of his nature, which, 



255 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Mr. Aniory's 
remarks. 



256 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix E 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Mr. Amory's 
remarks. 



within the small circle of his home and friends, was 
irresistibly winning, and which, though less known 
to the outside world, pervaded his whole being, and 
was often the hidden source of that magnetism 
and fascination which captivated all, and won for 
him hosts of friends and admirers wherever he was 
known. 

" His ready and deep sympathy in the hour of 
sorrow or affliction, as indicated by the tones of his 
voice, the expression of his face, or the simple elo- 
quence of his words, will be long remembered by 
many. Passing by that greatest and last domestic 
affliction, which made his home so desolate and his 
life so sad for the last two years, as too recent and 
sacred to be more than glanced at, I recall that 
agony of grief occasioned many years before by the 
sudden and shocking death of his nearest and dear- 
est friend, Mr. Stackpole. Mr. Motley, for a while 
at that time a near neighbor of mine, spent every 
afternoon with me on my piazza at Longwood ; and 
I shall never forget the touching words and man- 
ner in which he bewailed his loss in all the variety 
of thought and language which death and friend- 
ship could suggest, and with all the eloquence of 
an 'In Memoriam.' He could think and talk of 
nothing else. Subdued and softened by his sorrow, 
he seemed an altered man, and in the tenderness of 
his grief he was more like a mother weeping for 



Appendix. 



257 



an only child than a strong man mourning the loss 
even of his dearest friend. How easy it would be, 
Mr. l^resident, to select from a character so rich in 
its endless variety many other equally interesting 
peculiarities, and to illustrate them by similar rem- 
iniscences, no one can imagine without a familiar 
acquaintance with the incidents of his life, and a 
nice appreciation of those fine impulses of his 
nature which have shaped his career ; and this can 
be fitly done only by the eloquent pen of a biog- 
rapher who has known him from his youth. 

" I have made no allusion to Mr. Motley's diplo- 
matic career, which, but for circumstances beyond 
his control and not attributable to any fault of his, 
might have been as distinguished as his career as 
a writer, because I am sure that, to all who knew 
him, or the history of the termination of his mis- 
sions to Vienna and London, any defence of liim 
certainly, on either side of the water, would be en- 
tirely superfluous." 

The President now called on Dr. Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes, who said : — 

"The tlioughts which suggest themselves upon 
this occasion are such as belong to the personal 
memories of the dear friends whom we have lost, 
rather than to their literary labors, the just tribute 
to which must wait for a calmer hour than the 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 

Society. 
Mr. Amory's 
remarks. 



Dr. Holbo^'s 
remarks 



258 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix E, 



Mbss. Hist. 
Society. 
Dr. Holmes's 
remarks. 



present, following so closely as it does on our be- 
reavement. 

" To those of us who remember Mr. Motley dur- 
ing his last visit to this country, his death, though 
it was a blow to many lingering hopes, was hardly 
a surprise. But if we go back a few more years, 
and recall him as he appeared at our meeting of 
November, 1868, he comes before us with the 
promise of a long afternoon and evening to a life 
which was still in the brightness of its intellectual 
meridian. It fell to him on that occasion to speak 
before us of his friend, the late Dean Milman, and 
I am sure that not one of those who listened to 
him can forget the eftect his words and his presence 
produced upon all who were gathered around him. 

" He stood before us, a scholar speaking of a 
man of letters, and his words had the fitness, the 
balance, the flow, which belong to an imperial mas- 
ter of language. He was speaking of one who was, 
as he said, ' his life long a conspicuous ornament 
of the most cultivated society of London and of 
England ' ; and here was in his own person and 
address that harmonious union of rare qualities 
which all the world over is the master-key that 
opens every door, the countersign that passes every 
sentinel, the unsealed letter of introduction to all 
the highest circles of the highest civilization. 
Scholars are frequently forgetful of the outward 



Appendix. 



259 



graces which commend the man of the world to 
social favor. Here was a scholar who, to say the 
least, had rivalled the most robust and patient of 
our workers in drudgery, who had ploughed through 
manuscripts without number, whose crabbed char- 
acters and uncouth phrases might well have tried 
Champollion's temper ; yet here was a man of such 
natural graces and such distinguished bearing, that 
he seemed to belong rather to the gilded saloon 
than to the dusty library. 

" Let me touch briefly upon a few periods in his 
life. I remember him as a handsome, spirited- 
looking boy at Harvard College, where, at the early 
age of thirteen, he joined the class two years after 
my own, graduating in 1831. He was probably 
the youngest student in college, said to be as bright 
as he looked, and with the reputation of a remark- 
able talent for learning languages. Two years 
make a wide gulf in college life, and my intercourse 
with him was less frequent than at a later period. 
I recollect him in those earlier days as vivacious, 
attractive, brilliant, with such a lustre of promise 
about him as belonged to hardly any other of my 
own date, and after it, in my four years' college 
experience, if I perhaps except William Sturgis, 
whom a swift summons called from our side in all 
the beauty of his early youth. Motley was more 
nearly the ideal of a young poet than any boy — 



A.PPENDIXE. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Dr. Holmes's 
remarks. 



260 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Dr. Holmes's 
remarks. 



for he was only a boy as yet — who sat on the 
benches of the college chapel. In after years, one 
who knew Lord Byron most nearly noted his 
resemblance to that great poet, and spoke of it to 
one of my friends ; but in our young days many 
pretty youths affected that resemblance, and were 
laughed at for their pains, so that if Motley recalled 
Byron's portrait, it was only because he could not 
help it. His finely shaped and expressive features ; 
his large, luminous eyes ; his dark, waving hair ; 
the singularly spirited set of his head, which was 
most worthy of note for its shapely form and poise ; 
his well-outlined figure, — all gave promise of his 
manly beauty, and commended him to those even 
who could not fully appreciate the richer endow- 
ments of which they were only the outward signa- 
ture. How often such gifts and promises disap- 
point those w^ho count upon their fut-ure we who 
have seen the November of so many Aprils know 
too well. But wdth every temptation to a life of 
pleasant self-indulgence, flattery and the love of 
luxury could not spoil him. None knew better 
what they meant. ' Give me the luxuries, and I 
will dispense with the necessaries, of life,' was a 
playful saying of his, which is one of the three 
wittiest things that have been said in Boston in our 
time, and which, I think, has not been fairly 
claimed for any other wit of any period. 



Appendix. 



261 



" Soon after graduation, Motley left this country 
for Germany, where he studied two years longer in 
the universities of Berlin and Gottingen. I my- 
self was absent from the country when he returned, 
and only renewed an acquaintance, which then 
grew to intimacy with him, after my own return 
from a residence in Europe, at the end of the year 
1835. He was at that time just entering upon the 
practice of law, the profession which he had 
studied, but in the labors of which he never be- 
came very seriously engaged. 

" His first literary venture of any note was the 
story called ' Morton's Hope ; or, The Memoirs of a 
Provincial.' This first effort failed to satisfy the 
critics, the public, or himself. His personality per- 
vaded the characters and times which he portrayed, 
so that there was a discord between the actor and 
his costume. Brilliant passages could not save it ; 
and it was plain enough that he must ripen into 
something better before the world would give him 
the reception which surely awaited him if he should 
find his true destination. 

" The early failures of a great writer are like the 
first sketches of a great artist, and well reward 
patient study. More than this, the first efforts of 
poets and story-tellers are very commonly palimp- 
sests : beneath the rhymes or the fiction one can 
almost always spell out the characters which be- 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Dr. Holmes's 
remarks. 



262 



Jolm Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix E 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Dr. Holmes's 

remarks. 



tray the writer's self. Take these passages from 
the story just referred to : — 

" ' Ah ! flattery is a sweet and intoxicating po- 
tion, whether we drink it from an earthen ewer or 

a golden chalice Flattery from man to woman 

is expected : it is a part of the courtesy of society ; 
but when the divinity descends from the altar to 
burn incense to the priest, what wonder if the idol- 
ater should feel himself transformed into a god ! ' 

" He had run the risk of being spoiled, but he 
had a safeguard in his aspirations. 

"'My ambitious anticipations,' says Morton, in 
the story, ' were as boundless as they were various 
and conflicting. There was not a path which leads 
to glory in which I was not destined to gather 
laurels. As a warrior, I would conquer and over- 
run the world ; as a statesman, I would reorganize 
and govern it ; as a historian, I would consign it 
all to immortality ; and, in my leisure moments, I 
would be a great poet and a man of the world.' 

"Who can doubt that in this passage of his 
story he is picturing his own visions, one of the 
fairest of which was destined to become reality ? 

" But there was another element in his character, 
which those who knew him best recognized as one 



Appendix. 



263 



with which he had to struggle hard, — that is, a 
modesty which sometimes tended to collapse into 
self-distrust. This, too, betrays itself in the sen- 
tences which follow those just quoted : — 

" ' In short/ says Morton, ' I was already enrolled 
in that large category of what are called young 
men of genius, .... men of whom unheard-of things 
are expected; till after long preparation comes a 
portentous failure, and then they are forgotten. .... 
Alas ! for the golden imaginations of our youth. 
.... They are all disappointments. They are bright 
and beautiful, but they fade.' 

" Mr. Motley's diplomatic experience began with 
his appointment as Secretary of Legation to the 
American Embassy to Eussia, in 1840, — a position 
which he held for a few months only, and then re- 
turned to this country. 

"In 1845 he wrote an article on Peter the Great 
for the North American Eeview, which suggested 
to many of his friends that, though he had not 
taken the place as a novelist he might have hoped 
for, there was in him the stronger fibre of an his- 
torian. He did not, however, give up the idea of 
succeeding in his earlier field of effort ; and in 
1849 he published his second story, — ' Merry- 
Mount, a Eomance of the Massachusetts Colony ' ; 
which again, with all its merits of style and its 
brilliancy of description, was found wanting in some ^ 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Dr. Holmes's 
remarks. 



264 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix E. 

Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Dr. Holmes's 
lemarks. 



of the qualities demanded by an historical novel, 
and settled the question for him that his genius 
was not in every way adapted to that kind of com-- 
position. The truth was, he could not divest him- 
self of his personality and lose his individual char- 
acter in that of his own creations. It will be no- 
ticed, that, while his first story turned on the 
adventures of an individual, his second story came 
much nearer to the complexion of a true history. 
It was at about this uncertain period of his career 
that a friend of his found him at work one day 
with a. Dutch folio and a dictionary of that lan- 
guage. On being asked what he was doing with 
those uninviting books, he spoke of his turning his 
studies in the direction of history. ' I must break 
myself on something,' he said. 

"What came of the studies which began witli 
that Dutch dictionary you all know, the whole lit- 
erary world knows, and I need not recite the story. 
Neither will I take up your time with criticisms 
upon those noble works, which have passed their 
ordeal, and stand among the foremost contributions 
of the New World to the literature of the Old. 
The personal enthusiasm which gives a glow to 
every page, the inborn love of freedom, the gener- 
ous sympathy with all that is lofty, and the pas- 
sionate scorn of all that is petty and base, the 
richness of his descriptions, the vigor of his por- 



Appendix. 



265 



Appendix E. 



traits, — to speak of these is to repeat the common- 
places of all our literary tribunals. I cannot re- 
frain from adding a single thought which I do not 
remember having met with. 

" The sturdy little State of Holland — a nation 
with a population comparable for numbers with 
that of the city of London — offers itself to too 
many English and American minds with the unhe- 
roic aspect in which the Dutchman has been pre- 
sented in the satirical verse of Marvell and the 
ludicrous travesty of Irving. We cannot keep the 
pictures and figures of Diedrich Knickerbocker out 
of our fancies when we think of a Hollander. Mr. 
Graham, the English historian of the United States, 
complains that Mr. Irving ' has by anticipation rid- 
iculed my topic and parodied my narrative.' We 
can still smile, or laugh, as Sir Walter Scott did, 
over the extravagances of our great American hu- 
morist ; but it remained for an American historian 
to assert the true dignity of the valiant people who 
conquered an empire from the waves, and rescued \ 
it from the tyranny of still more lawless masters. \ 
The world can forgive all the playful mischief of I 
the satirist so long as it contemplates the majestic | 
figure of William the Silent, and reads the story of 
the defence of Leyden, the record of John of Barne- 
veldt, and the romantic episode of Hugo Grotius in 
, the pages of Motley. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Dr. Holmes's 
remarks. 



266 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix E. 

Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Dr. Holmes's 
remarks. 



" I shall not do more than allude to the further 
diplomatic career of our honored associate. I know 
that it ended in disappointment, and a feeling that 
a great wrong had been done him. But I know, 
also, that his highest office was undertaken with a 
profound sense of responsibility; that its duties 
were discharged as faithfully as he knew how to 
perform them; and that, whatever sting was left 
by the manner in which he had been dealt with, 
there was no poison of self-reproach to rankle in 
the wound. Those who will search curiously 
enough in the 'Life of John of Barneveld' will 
discover at least one passage in which the writer's 
own violated sensibilities find an expression in the 
record of another's grievance, — the natural device 
by which men and women of all ages have sought 
relief : — 

' TLaTpoKXov TrpocfiaarLv, (rcf>o}v 8 avTwv KySe €Kao"ny/ 

I do not believe that the violence which reached 
the nervous centres of Sumner's life told on him 
with more fatal effect than the rude shock of Mr. 
Motley's sudden recall from England upon his 
proud and excitable spirit, and through his sensi- 
bilities on the organ of thought, from the internal 
laceration of which he died. 

" A slight attack — hardly serious enough in its 
effects to be called paralytic — interrupted the lit- 



Appendix. 

erary labors which he had resumed after the close 
of his diplomatic career. His speech never seems 
to have been affected, and his handwriting showed 
no remarkable change, though he complained of 
weight and weakness of the right side, and found it 
a considerable effort to write. He was slowly re- 
gaining something of his usual health and spirits, 
when the death, in December, 1874, of the lovely 
and noble woman who had made the happiness of 
his life, cast the deep shadow over him which was 
never lifted. He passed the summer which fol- 
lowed his bereavement in this country, where for 
some weeks I saw him daily, and under those con- 
ditions which revealed his inmost nature more com- 
pletely than I had ever known it in my long 
intimacy with him. He appeared to have forgotten 
all lesser trials in the one great sorrow which had 
left his life so nearly desolate. One thought, one 
feeling, seemed ever present ; an undercurrent which 
betrayed itself not by unmanly signs of weakness, 
but by the tenderness and the reverence to which 
the memory of her from whom he had been parted 
saddened and subdued every accent. The language 
in which he spoke of his wife was the highest trib- 
ute to womanhood that ever found words on living 
lips in my hearing. And not to womanhood, not 
to that noble woman alone, for they revealed the 
passionate intensity of his own loving nature, and 



267 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Dr. Holmes's 
remarks. 



268 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix E 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Dr. Holmes's 
remarks. 



showed lis better than we ever -understood before 
what was his peculiar underlying charm, and why 
we who loved him had loved him with such strong 
affection. 

"But time has anodynes for griefs it cannot 
cure, and his letters showed that he was doing his 
best to bear his burden of sorrow, and that the 
affection of those who were left him was not with- 
out its healing influences. He had even hoped to 
be able to do something more in the way of lit- 
erary labor, when suddenly, on the 29th of May, 
without any immediate warning, the thread by 
which his fate hung over him parted. The sum- 
mons, though at an unexpected moment, might 
have been looked for at any time. The stroke fell 
like a blow on the abeady suffering organ through 
which his untiring intellect had wrought its vast 
and exhausting labors. ' It has come ! ' he said, 
and, after a few hours of unconscious life in death, 
he passed quietly away. 

"He leaves all his uncounted honors, which I 
need not try to enumerate ; he leaves the unbla- 
zoned record of a social career hardly rivalled for 
the brilliancy of its success ; his works, sacred to 
heroism, the spirit of freedom and humanity, are 
his monument ; and, amidst the sorrowing tears of 
those who dearly loved him, in many lands and in 
every station of life, from the lowliest to the lof- 



Appendix. 



269 



tiest, lie is laid by the side of her from whom 
he would not have been parted in death, to sleep 
in the mausoleum of a nation surrounded by 
the sepulchres of those who have made her his- 
tory." 

The Eev. E. C. "Waterston then said : — 

" It is a pleasant thought, Mr. President, to re- 
member that the two members whom we to-day 
commemorate were personal friends. I have here 
a brief letter from Mr. Motley to Mr. Quincy, — 
the last letter which Mr. Quincy ever received from 
him, — written in pencil, from Nahant, during his 
last visit to this country. It may have some inter- 
est at this moment. 

"'My dear Quincy, — Many thanks for your 
kind words of remembrance, and for your Memoir 
of Charles Sprague. I perfectly remember our visit 
to the venerable poet, and am highly gratified that 
he should have been pleased by it. I have read 
your Memoir with much interest and sympathy, 
and should think it a very just, and not in the 
least an over-appreciative, tribute to his delicate 
genius and genuine and honorable character. 

"'There are a good many lines of his poetry 
which I can repeat now, and could do ever since I 
was a Sophomore. I hope to see you in Boston be- 
fore I leave, which will be in October, as people 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 



Rev. Mr. 

Waterston's 

remarks. 



Mr. Motley's 
last note to 
Mr. Edmiuid 
Quiucy. 



270 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix E. 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Mr. Waters- 
ton's re- 
marks. 



Professor W. 

Everett's 
remarks. 



seem to decide that the winter here will be too 
severe for me. 

" Pray excuse my illegible pencilling, but it is 
very hard work for me to write. 

" ' I am your sincere friend, 

"'J. L. MOTLEY.'" 

Mr. Waterston continued : " Mr. Motley, after 
the publication of his ' Merry-Mount,' expressed 
his regret to Mr. Quincy that it had met with so 
little success. Mr. Quincy replied : ' Motley, turn 
your attention to history. Your style is admirably 
adapted to that, and every power of your mind 
would there find ample scope, and the result, I am 
sure, would meet with success.' 'Do you think 
so ? ' he said. ' I feel certain of your perfect 
triumph in that field,' continued Mr. Quincy. It 
is pleasant to think that these life-long friends went 
so nearly together. United in their lives, in their 
death they were not divided." 

Professor William Everett then spoke as fol- 
lows : — 

" There is one incident, sir, in Mr. Motley's ca- 
reer that has not been mentioned to-day, which is, 
perhaps, most vividly remembered by those of us 
who were in Europe at the outbreak of our civil 
war in 1861. At that time, the ignorance of Eng- 



Appendix. 

lishmen, friendly or otherwise, about America, was 
infinite : they knew very little of us, and that little 
wrong. Americans were overwhelmed with ques- 
tions, taunts, threats, misrepresentations, the out- 
growth of ignorance, and ignoring worse than 
ignorance, from every class of Enghshmen. Never 
was an authoritative exposition of our hopes and 
policy worse needed ; and there was no one to do 
it. The outgoing diplomatic agents represented a 
bygone order of things ; the representatives of Mr. 
Lincoln's administration had not come. At that 
time of anxiety, Mr. Motley, living in England as 
a private person, came forward with two letters in 
the Times, which set forth the cause of the United 
States once and for all. No unofficial, and few 
official, men could have spoken with such author- 
ity, and been so certain of obtaining a hearing 
from Englishmen. Thereafter, amid all the clouds 
of falsehood and ridicule which we had to encoun- 
ter, there was one lighthouse fixed on a rock to 
which we could go for foothold, from which we 
could not be driven, and against which all assaults 
were impotent. 

" There can be no question that the effect pro- 
duced by these letters helped, if help had been 
needed, to point out Mr. Motley as a candidate for 
high diplomatic place who could not be overlooked. 
Their value was recognized alike by his fellow- 



271 



Appendix E. 

Mass. Hist. 
Society. 
Professor W. 
Everett's 
remarks. 



272 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix E 



Mass. Hist. 
Society. 



citizens in America and his admirers in England ; 
but none valued them more than the little band of 
exiles, who were struggling against terrible odds, 
and who rejoiced with a great joy to see the stars 
and stripes, whose centennial anniversary those 
guns are now celebrating, planted by a hand so 
truly worthy to rally every American to its sup- 
port." 

Eemarks were also made by the Eev. S. K. 
Lothrop, D. D., and the resolutions were unani- 
mously adopted, all the members rising. 

The President appointed Professor Lowell to 
write the Memoir of Mr. Quincy, and Dr. Holmes 
that of Mr. Motley, for the Society's " Proceedings." 

On motion of Mr. George B. Emerson, it was 
" Voted, That the commemorative proceedings of 
this meeting be printed." 



Appendix. 



273 



Appendix F. 

List of his Honorary Titles. 

The following list of the Societies of which Mr. 
Motley was a member is from a memorandum in 
his own handwriting, dated November, 1866. 

Historical Society of Massachusetts. 
" <( « Minnesota. 

" " New York. 
" " *' Ehode Island. 

<' <^ Maryland. 
*' " " Tennessee. 

" " " New Jersey. 

American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 
American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. 
Doctor of Laws, New York University. 
'' " " Harvard « 

" " Literature, New York University. 
Eoyal Society of Antiquaries, England. 
Doctor of Laws, Oxford University, England. 

" " " Cambridge " " 

Athenaeum Club, London. 

Eoyal Academy of Arts and Sciences of Amsterdam. 
Historical Society of Utrecht, Holland. 



Appendix F. 



Honorary 
titles, eta 



274 



John Lothrojp Motley. 



Appendix F. 



Honorary 
titles, etc. 



Historical Society of Ley den, Holland. 
Doctor of Philosophy, University of Groningen. 
Corresponding Member of French Institute ; Acad- 
emy of Moral and Political Sciences. 

Academy of Arts and Sciences of Petersburg. 
Doctor of Laws, University of Leyden. 

The last honorary title conferred upon him was that 
of Foreign Associate of the French Academy of Moral 
and Pohtical Sciences. This is the highest title ther 
Academy can confer. 



Appendix. 



275 



Appendix G. 

Poems by W. W. Story and William CuTlen Bryant. 

I CANNOT close this Memoir more appropriately 
than by appending the two following poetical 
tributes : — 

IN MEMORIAM, — JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 

BY W. W. STOEY. 

Farewell, dear friend ! For us the grief and pain, 

Who shall not see thy Hving face again j 

For us the sad yet noble memories 

Of lofty thoughts, of upward-looking eyes. 

Of warm aifections, of a spirit bright 

'With glancing fancies and a radiant light, 

That, flashing, threw around all common things 

Heroic halos and imaginings ; 

Nothing of this can fade while life shall last, 

But brighten, with death's shadow o'er it cast. 

For us the pain ; for thee the larger life. 
The higher being, freed from earthly strife ; 
Death hath but opened unto thee the door 
Thy spirit knocked so strongly at before ', 



Appendix G. 



Poem hy 
W.W.Story. 



276 



John LotJirop Motley. 



Appendix G. 



Poem by 
W.W.Story. 



And as a falcon from its cage set free, 
Where it has pined and fluttered helplessly, 
Longing to soar, and gazing at the sky- 
Where its strong wings their utmost flight may try, 
So has thy sonl, from out life's broken bars. 
Sprung in a moment up beyond the stars, 
Where all thy powers unfettered, unconfined, 
Their native w^ay in loftier regions find. 

Ah, better thus, in one swift moment freed, 
Than wounded, stricken, here to drag and bleed ! 
This was the fate we feared, but happy Death 
Has swept thee from us, as a sudden breath 
Wrings the ripe fruit from off the shaken bough, — 
And ours the sorrow, thine the glory now ! 

How memory goes back, and lingering dwells 

On the lost past, and its fond story tells ! 

When glad ambition fired thy radiant face. 

And youth was thine, and hope, and manly grace, 

And Life stood panting to begin its race ; 

Thine eyes their summer lightning flashing out. 

Thy brow with dark locks clustering thick about, 

Thy sudden laugh from lips so sensitive. 

Thy proud, quick gestures, all thy face alive, — 

These, like a vision of the morning, rise 

And brightly pass before my dreaming eyes. 

And then again I see thee, when the breath 

Of the great world's applause first stirred the wreath 



Appendix. 



277 



That Fame upon thy head ungrudging placed j 
Modest and earnest, all thy spirit braced 
To noble ends, and with a half excess 
As of one running in great eagerness, 
And leaning forward out beyond the poise 
Of coward prudence, holding but as toys 
The world's great favors, when it sought to stay 
Thy impulsive spirit on its ardent way. 

For thee no swerving to a private end ; 
Stern in thy faith, that naught could break or bend, 
Loving thy country, pledged to Freedom's cause, 
Disdaining wrong, abhorrent of the laws 
Expedience prompted with the tyrant's plea, 
Wielding thy sword for Justice fearlessly, — 
So brave, so true, that nothing could deter, 
!Nor friend, nor foe, thy ready blow for her. 

Ah, noble spirit, whither hast thou fled % 
What doest thou amid the unnumbered dead % 
Oh, say not mid the dead, for what hast thou 
Among the dead to do % No ! rather now, 
If Faith and Hope are not a wild deceit, 
The truly living thou hast gone to meet. 
The noble spirits purged by death, whose eye 
O'erpeers the brief bounds of mortality j 
And they behold thee rising there afar, 
Serenely clear above Time's cloudy bar, 
And greet thee as we greet a rising star. 



Appendix G. 



Poem by 
W. W. Story. 



278 



John Lothrop Motley. 



Appendix &. 



IN MEMOEY OF JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 



Poem by 
W. C. Bry- 
«nt. 



BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Sleep, Motley, with the great of ancient days, 

Who wrote for all the years that yet shall be. 
Sleep with Herodotus, whose name and praise 

Have reached the isles of earth's remotest sea. 
Sleep, while, defiant of the slow delays 

Of Time, thy glorious writings speak for thee 
And in the answering heart of millions raise 

The generous zeal for Eight and Liberty. 
And should the days o'ertake us, when, at last, 

The silence that — ere yet a human pen 
Had traced the slenderest record of the past — 

Hushed the primeval languages of men 
Upon our English tongue its spell shall cast, 

Thy memory shall perish only then. 



JUL O |J?5J"f 



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